


Night and Day

by tomorrowthestars



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (in Admiral Akbar voice) It's a coup!, A bit of Solo sass here and there, Ahch-To is the place to be, Complicated enemies, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), I have no idea how to write plot but that's what learning is for, M rating starts in Chapter 11, Other characters have started showing up, Upping the Force Bond capabilities, quite possibly the slowest burn of all time, so as canon-compliant as I can make it, somewhat canon-compliant but I don't remember everything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-04-23 10:39:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 36,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14330685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomorrowthestars/pseuds/tomorrowthestars
Summary: The Force Bond between the Supreme Leader and the Last Jedi continues after the death of Snoke and the Battle of Crait, although neither of them knows what to do or say after the rejection and betrayal in the Throne Room.





	1. Between the Darkness and the Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> I was wondering how these twin flames would react when they are connected once again. This was just a thing in my head, but I decided to write it down.

Rey hasn’t spoken to him in any of their Force bond sessions since before Crait.  Neither of them have any control over when the bond opens and when it closes, but she does have control over what she chooses to do during the bond.  And so she doesn’t acknowledge his presence.  Then again, he doesn’t acknowledge hers either.

 

She also works to keep him out of her mind, although she doesn’t have to work very hard, since he doesn’t seem to be trying to get in.  Rey has chosen to stay out of his mind, because that only seems fair; although if she’s honest with herself, she has to admit that she’s afraid it might hurt to see what he’s thinking.  Not physically, but emotionally.  She had been so certain that he would turn if she went to him, she had been looking forward to it so eagerly; but in the end, he had refused, preferring to hold on to the reins of power.  It was painful to remember it even now, and so Rey simply decided not to remember.  She moved forward, working with the Resistance, supporting the rebellion against his rule, taking care of business.  But while life in the Resistance was busy and dangerous, it was more relaxed than her life on Jakku had ever been, and unfortunately, that meant that she had time to think.

 

She’d had a little more of that time than usual lately, since overt hostilities were momentarily on hold.  The Resistance had been decimated to the point that its entire membership could fit inside the _Falcon_ , and the loss of the _Supremacy_ had severely crippled the First Order’s battle capabilities.  Rey had once heard military life during wartime described as long stretches of boredom broken up with short bursts of terror and adrenalin, and she knew that they were currently in one of the long stretches, with nothing to do but repair, recover, and recruit.

 

As a result, she wasn’t tired enough at night, and she was having difficulty sleeping.  She would lie there, alone and still in the dark in her tiny room on their latest base, and her mind would drift everywhere, even places that she didn’t want it to drift; since most of those places involved him, it was worse if the bond had opened at any point during the day.  Lately, the bond had been opening more and more frequently, so there was more and more thinking that she was trying not to do as the hours of the night crept by in silence.

 

The last several nights had been especially exhausting.  She was lucky to have gotten a couple of hours of sleep each night, and her reaction times and thought processes were getting slower.  She had weary, red-rimmed eyes and found it difficult to smile, and everyone had been noticing. Leia had finally ordered her off work so that she could take a meal and get some rest.  She had almost fallen asleep on top of her plate before even consuming very much of what was on it, something that had never happened to her before in her life, and so she had hopes of being able to pass out as soon as her head hit the pillow.  She was even allowing herself to be optimistic enough to look forward to it.

 

Then she entered her room and immediately forgot all about maintaining Force bond silence.

 

“Uh-uh, NO!”  She said angrily.  “No way!”

 

He was stretched out on one edge of her bed, his arm over his face, and he jumped at the sound of her voice.

 

“No way what?”  He responded, his voice tense.  “And please explain what a little more quietly, if you can manage it.”

 

Rey did not lower her voice, and took some satisfaction when he winced again.  “You are NOT sleeping in my bed!”

 

“No, I’m not.”  He snapped.  “I’m _trying_ to sleep in mine.”

 

“Listen,” she said, putting her hands on her hips.  “I’m standing in my room, looking at you lying right there in my bed!”

 

“You know how this works.  You know I’m not actually there, any more than you’re actually here, standing in my quarters screeching at me.”  He dropped his arm from in front of his face to look up at her.

 

He looked as rough as she felt, with bags under his bloodshot eyes and a face that was even more pale than usual.

 

That was a shocking thing to see.  Rey had expected him to be much healthier-looking, since he was Supreme Leader and had everything he needed and wanted and an entire fleet to bring it to him.  It worried her a little.  He was wearing a black shirt (of _course_ it was black) with no sleeves, and the second shocking thing was how incredibly well-muscled his arms were.  She’d only ever seen him without arm coverings once, and she hadn’t exactly been focusing on his arms at the time.  She could feel herself focusing on them now, though.

 

Rey made herself look back up to his face, and saw him taking in her appearance as well.  As soon as their eyes met again, she looked away.

 

“I don’t mean to screech,” she sighed, in a half-hearted apology.

 

Out of the corner of her eye, she detected a faint smirk, probably because he’d caught her looking him over. Her temper rose again. “Or maybe I do mean to screech.  Maybe I’m going to screech a lot.  You see, I’m _very_ tired.  I haven’t had a lot of sleep lately.  And I’d really like to go to bed.”

 

“So go to bed,” he said, turning his head back to what must have been his pillow and rolling to his side, as if to end the conversation.

 

“I can’t.  You’re there.”

 

“Is there not enough room?”

 

“No, there is,” Rey admitted snappishly.  “But I’m not going to sleep right next to you.  I can’t believe you would just expect that I could.”

 

“I’m not expecting…” he burst out, then groaned impatiently.  “You know, of all the times we’ve been connecting lately that I’ve _wanted_ you to talk to me, couldn’t we right now just go back to ignoring each other?”

 

  “I’m not going to be able to ignore you.  So you’ll have to get out.”

 

“No,” he said firmly, slowing down his words as if explaining to a child.  “You see, _I’m_ very tired.  _I_ haven’t had a lot of sleep lately.  And I’m trying to go to sleep now.  _In my bed_.”

 

“It’s my bed,” Rey shot back, and with another angry groan he pulled on something under his head.  When he brought his arm back up, he was holding a pillow.  It wasn’t her pillow, it had a black pillowcase on it.  Because _of course_ it did.

 

He unceremoniously dropped the pillow on top of his head and draped his arm over it.

 

Her eyes narrowed.  “Don’t you _dare_ block me out, not until we’ve settled this.”

 

His voice was muffled under the pillow.  “There’s nothing to settle.”  There was a slight pause, and then he spoke more gently.  “We’re both exhausted.  You know this will probably be over soon.  Please, just go to sleep.  We can fight next time if you need to fight.”

 

“I don’t _need_ to fight with you,” Rey pouted, although she had lowered her voice.  She stood a moment longer, watching his arm over the pillow. 

 

She was very tired, and he wasn’t going to get up.  He wasn’t even there, really.   And it would probably be over soon anyway. 

 

Rey slowly moved the few steps across the room, watching him to see if he would move, but he didn’t.  She climbed into bed, jostling around more than necessary to remind him that she was there.  She heard a faint but dramatic sigh from under his pillow.

 

“Do not steal the blanket,” she told him.

 

His voice was weary.  “It’s not the same blanket, Rey.  Please try to get some sleep.”

 

Rey turned to face away from him.

 

They lay in silence for a moment, and then she asked, more softly than she intended.  “You can’t sleep either?”

 

“I usually can’t,” he whispered groggily, “but it’s gotten worse lately.”

 

She didn’t know what to say to that, and she didn’t want to keep talking if there was even a chance they could sleep, so she pulled the blankets up on her neck and tried to settle in.  She could feel the warmth of his body; he radiated heat like a fire.  She had to admit, although she didn’t want to, that it was oddly relaxing.  His breathing became more regular, as if he was beginning to drop off, and she began to breathe in time with him; she didn’t mean to do it, it just began happening. Between the warmth and the breathing, she felt her body begin to sink into the saggy mattress.  Her eyes were getting heavy, and she decided to close them, just for a moment.  In that one moment they were closed, she fell asleep.

 

Once or twice during the night, she emerged from the depths of slumber and realized that he was still there.  Each time she lay awake for a moment or two, eyes closed, listening to him and feeling his warmth, before sinking calmly back down into sleep again.

 

When Rey woke for the final time, she felt more rested than she had in weeks.  It felt _delicious_.  She smiled, and then slowly opened her eyes.

 

He was still there, and they had somehow turned during the night so that they were no longer back-to-back.  In fact, they were very closely face-to-face, and the pillow had come off as he slept.

 

He did not appear to be awake yet; he was still breathing in the same regular, soothing tempo that he had been when she had fallen asleep.  Rey took the opportunity to really look at him.

 

His face was calm and untroubled.  She had almost never seen it like that; perhaps once, in the hut on Ahch-To, for a few fleeting moments.  His hair was tumbled wildly around his face, turbulent in such a way that it almost begged to be brushed back and calmed, and Rey thought about doing just that for a moment before deciding against it.  He had black eyelashes, beautiful ones too, even blacker than his hair; and there was a stunning grace in the angle of his jawline. The scar was healing nicely into a fine thin ridge of skin across his face.  It didn’t look bad on him, she had to admit.  She knew that he could probably have had it healed completely so that it wouldn’t show, and she imagined he hadn’t done so because he thought it made him look more dangerous.  She almost smiled at the thought.

 

It was _her_ scar.  She had given it to him.

 

Rey wondered what it would feel like, if she touched it.  Could she run her fingers along it, ever so slightly, and smooth the skin back so that he looked as he did the first time she ever saw him?  She brought her hand up slowly, intending to just barely trace it; but before she could, he gave a slight shudder, caught his breath, and opened his eyes.

 

Rey froze with her hand in the air, not wanting to call attention to what she’d been thinking about doing by moving it.

 

They were looking directly into each other’s eyes now, as they had before, so many times.  She remembered all of them, every single one; pushing into each other’s minds in the interrogation room, standing so close with lightsabers locked together at the edge of a cliff, the feel of his fingertips against hers in the firelight, the timeless moment just before they turned to face Snoke’s guards, the heartbreak among the falling embers in the throne room.  So many shared glances, so many shared thoughts. So many possibilities now gone by, so much they would never share.  She could feel the sadness she’d been holding at bay begin to creep back into her heart.

 

_You’re not alone._

_Neither are you._

_It isn’t too late._

 

When he spoke, his voice was gentle and husky with sleep.

 

“You snore,” he said tenderly.

 

And then the bond closed, and he was gone.

 

Rey brought her hand down onto the bed where he had just been, and it was cold, as if he’d never been there.  She stayed like that for a moment, waiting to see if he would return; but she realized that was foolish, and sat up to stretch and start her business for the day.  Time to get up and move forward again.  Keep moving forward, she told herself.  That’s what you need to do.

 

As she rose from her bed, she decided that the next time the bond opened up, they were going to have an in-depth conversation about which one of them actually snored.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song I couldn't get out of my head while writing this chapter: "All I Know" by Art Garfunkel


	2. Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Supreme Leader and the Last Jedi have a short but frank discussion about his recent wartime decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another thing. This was more of a struggle to write. I wasn't sure where it would go until it was written.

Rey is in her tiny cubbyhole of a room, picking through the few clothes she has and hoping to find some that aren’t completely a mess. The ones she is currently wearing are covered in engine grease and various forms of grime, and she wants to be able to sit down without making anything else dirty. It’s hard to find anything, though, and Rey resigns herself to the idea of washing things out once she finds an outfit that she can hold the freshly cleaned clothes against and not make them dirty all over again. At least it won’t take long to wash them; she has very little in the way of clothes.

She manages to find a tunic and leggings that will do, and is about to start changing into them when she feels the silent curve of the Force winding through the room and all around her. She turns to look for him.

He’s close by her, sitting in a chair (not hers, so of course _black_ ) and gazing intently at a datapad, his shoulders tense. He does not turn to look at her, but Rey notices his shoulders hitch slightly, as if he’s taken a quick breath. He looks better than he did the last time he’d appeared, but not by much. She knows she doesn’t. 

“I’m not the one who snores. You are.” Rey tells him defiantly.

He raises his eyebrows slightly but does not look up. “Ah, yes,” he responds. “The fight you wanted to have.”

“I didn’t _want_ to have a fight,” she reminds him. “I was tired and it was very disconcerting to just turn around and see you where you were, and then you wouldn’t listen to me.”

“I was listening. I just wasn’t doing what you wanted me to do.” His eyes are still locked upon the datapad. 

“You put a pillow over your head.”

“I could still hear you through it.”

 _He couldn’t be any more irritating if he was trying to be_ , Rey fumes, and it occurs to her that he may very well be doing just that. She takes a few steps towards him, which is all the room that lies between them, and makes an obvious attempt to peer over his shoulder.

“What are you working on?” It’s a verbal poke, not an actual question, and he gives an angry grunt and tosses the datapad. She can’t see where it lands; once it leaves his hands, it’s gone from her sight. She’s not so annoyed with him that she doesn’t notice and make a mental note for later.

“Fine. We’ll do this.” He spins abruptly in his chair to face her, and his knees almost knock into hers as he stops himself in place. His eyes widen in surprise. “What have you been into?”

Rey had forgotten how dirty she was, and she does not appreciate being reminded.

“Engines,” she snaps. “Repairs. Fixing your destruction.”

His eyebrows rise. “ _My_ destruction?”

“Yes, your destruction.” She crosses her arms in front of her chest, hiding the worst of the dirt. “You are the Supreme Leader of the First Order, are you not?”

He tilts his head slightly to the side. “And that automatically equates to destruction?”

“You’re saying it doesn’t?” She leans forward slightly in challenge. “Would you like me to recite you a list? Systems, planets, cultures?”

“It’s called war, Rey. Destruction is a given on both sides.” He sounds like a teacher talking to a difficult student. “And I’m sure you have a substantial amount of intelligence as to how much destruction has or has not actually occurred recently.”

She doesn’t, not really. She attends meetings, of course, but only as the token Jedi, and she leaves the room when sensitive issues are discussed. She has not explained the reason why she does so to anyone, and no one has asked her for one. She can imagine the officers discussing her with each other over bootleg bottles of whatever spirits have been rustled up on the latest supply run. _The Jedi have always been a mystery_ , she imagines them saying. _She must know anyway, with her powers_. 

They know so little about her.

There is a recent First Order victory that she does remember, one that had left her shaken and in tears when she heard about it. “The Atharians,” she says. “You decimated them completely, and there was _no reason_ …”.

“Atharas was a planet of vital strategic importance, and we needed their support, their infrastructure, and their resources. I would have been more than happy to let them live their lives if they had been reasonable. But the Atharians refused to accept the First Order.” His eyes grow darker. “They sabotaged everything we did, most likely with the help of your Resistance.” He practically spits the last word out, as if it tastes foul in his mouth. “Some of the lives lost were civilians who were caught in the line of your fire, or were in the wrong place when your spies blew up our equipment. Destruction and death go both ways. No one is innocent in war.”

Rey lets out a small, bitter laugh. “So you’ll allow people their lives, but only if they are reasonable and do as you tell them?” 

He pauses for a moment, and when he speaks, he sounds tired. “I have generals who disagree with that idea most vehemently.”

Rey presses on. “But you make the decisions.”

He looks up at her, calm and direct. “Yes.”

He has always been honest with her, especially through the Bond. He may try to deflect if the conversation is a challenging one, but he tells her the truth.

Sometimes she wishes he didn’t. 

“So Atharas…” she begins, but doesn’t continue

“…was my decision,” he finishes for her. He sits still, watching her carefully, but she can feel the energy he is emitting into the Force, anxious waves that spike and twist around them.

Rey takes a step back from him; there’s not room to do much more. She can feel the itchy, fierce swell of tears rising in her eyes.

“Go ahead,” he says, leaning forward slightly, intent on her face, his voice low. “Say it. Tell me I’m a monster. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

She can’t speak; there is no way to voice all of the things she wants to say to him. She wants to rage against him, call him a murderer and a tyrant and yes, a _monster_ , fling herself against him with fists and lightsaber. She wants to take him by the hand and drag him to Atharas, show him the loss and devastation that she had heard about, bring him face to face with surviving refugees and make him understand what he had done. But most of all, Rey wants to take his face in her hands and beg him to stop what he is doing, to come back with her and be someone else, someone she knows he is inside. She shakes her head rapidly, clutching her arms more tightly around her.

He doesn’t take his eyes off her, and she feels a tear begin to slip into the grime on her cheek as she sees something lost and helpless pass through his gaze. He begins to stand slowly, as if he is afraid to frighten her, and as he rises from the chair it disappears from view.

Despite her step backwards, they are standing close, very close, and she can feel the heat of him, feel herself relaxing into his presence in a way that both comforts and infuriates her.

“Rey,” he says, a tone of near desperation underneath the smooth whisper of his voice, “All the choices could be bad ones, and I would still have to make the decision.”

A thought occurs to her, with terrible clarity.

“If I had joined you,” she says slowly, her whisper echoing his, “I would have been a part of making this choice. It would have been mine to decide as well as yours.”

She sees him wince at that, and she knows he is imagining how she would feel if she had been part of this with him, what it would have cost her to have to make such a decision. And then he shakes his head, and steps closer to her.

“No,” he says quietly, “If you were here, we might have been able to find another way. You and I, together, we’re stronger than anyone or anything, and we could do things any way we wanted.”

 _I can’t believe you think that_ , she wants to say, _you’re delusional_ , but she remembers the Praetorian Guards, the highly-trained, impenetrably-armored soldiers wielding frighteningly deadly weapons and outnumbering them four to one, and while it had been a close-run thing for a moment or two, they had still won out. It shouldn’t have been possible, but they had done it.

 _Together we are all of the endless possibilities_ , Rey thinks, and is appalled at herself for even entertaining the notion that he might be right.

And then he is gone, and she is alone again.

She knows he is out there, somewhere, on his command ship, with bloodthirsty generals and very few good choices, tired and every bit as alone as she is.

She hopes she makes it into the shower before she begins to cry for real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Poison & Wine", The Civil Wars
> 
> The song I couldn't get out of my head while writing this chapter: "Baby Can I Hold You" by Traci Chapman
> 
> I rather doubt there's a planet called Atharas anywhere in the SW universe. I found a planet name generator on the internet and just kept pressing the button until I got something that sounded right. I had to go through a lot of options, including "Craputor". No, I am not kidding.


	3. Hint of a Spark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Last Jedi builds a lightsaber, with some assistance from the Supreme Leader.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had such a difficult time figuring out where they would be after the last chapter, and then last night this occurred to me. I will live and die in the opinion that Ben is at his best when he is supporting Rey.

The pieces of the lightsaber are spread on the floor in front of her, but none of them are cooperating.

Rey is confident that she understands the schematics of what she needs to do; she’s been over it many times in her own head, and many more times with Rose, seeking input. But nothing is working correctly, and she’s just about had it. She’d spent hours meditating on the split crystal that she’d salvaged from the remains of the lightsaber that had broken in the Throne Room, and she thinks that at least is ready. But she can’t get the rest of it to kriffing _come together_ ; her fingers, usually so adept at manipulating mechanical parts, are awkward and nearly useless at actually constructing the stupid thing.

She takes a sharp, angry breath, then starts again, determined to make it do what she wants. The pieces slip within her grasp almost immediately, and she drops them to the floor and lets loose a stream of the filthiest obscenities she’d picked up from the traders on Jakku, pounding her fists against the floor in frustrated rage.

“I haven’t heard that one before,” he says in surprise. “You’ll have to translate it for me sometime.”

She glares up in the direction of the voice; she had been so absorbed in her task and her frustration that she hadn’t noticed that the bond had opened. He is lying on her bed again, underneath a _black_ blanket, slightly propped up now and watching her.

“What the hell is it with you and black?” She demands fiercely. “Is it supposed to be a symbol of your _soul_ or something?”

“Ah, you’re constructing a new lightsaber.” He sits up completely now, his interest piqued. 

“You are kriffing _brilliant_ , aren’t you?”

“And it’s not going well,” he observes, and if the lightsaber were ready she’d come after him with it simply for the little smirk at the corner of his mouth.

“Go away!” She looks back down to the scattered components, burning at the thought of him enjoying her incompetence.

“I can’t,” he says, which is true, and then he slides off the bed and walks over to her. His feet are bare, and he is wearing what are most likely his night clothes, the black _like-his-soul_ sleeveless shirt she’d seen him in before and a pair of loose pants made of some soft material. He looks slightly more relaxed than usual, and he looks _good_ like that, damn him. She scowls as he sits across from her, the pieces scattered between them.

“I can see them,” he says quietly, gesturing at the floor. “This is the first time I can see anything that isn’t somehow in direct contact with you.”

Her anger recedes slightly in the face of this new development, and they consider it for a moment.

“It’s been my lightsaber,” she offers. “So perhaps it’s connected to me through the Force?”

“It belonged to my family,” he responds. “So perhaps it’s connected to me.”

“Don’t start,” she warns. “I’ve just spent a lot of time on this crystal, you are not taking it back from me.”

“Crystals,” he says. “It split.”

“It’s still the same crystal,” Rey points out in irritation.

“So the crystals are ready,” he muses, and she rolls her eyes, “but for some reason the construction isn’t working.” He looks at her with amusement. “You do see the irony of that?”

“No,” she says sarcastically.

“How have you been doing it?”

“Seriously?” She looks at him in disbelief. “You’re trying to help?”

He shrugs. “I’m not busy at the moment.”

“You realize I’m most likely going to use it against you.”

“My victory won’t mean as much if you’re fighting without a proper lightsaber,” he says, and gives her a cheeky glance from under his tousled bangs.

Rey has to turn her face away, because she can’t keep herself from smiling.

“Show me,” he asks, and she picks up the pieces to begin.

“Ah,” he says. “That’s why.”

“What?”

“You’ll need to use the Force,” he tells her. “You meditate, and put it together that way.”

“Bantha shit.”

“Have you made one before?” His voice is calm and authoritative. “Because I have.”

“All right,” she huffs, dropping the pieces back onto the floor and shutting her eyes. “I’ll meditate.”

“No,” he says, and she opens her eyes to glare at him again. “You have to calm down first.”

“I _am_ calm,” she says through gritted teeth.

The corner of his mouth twitches. “No, you’re not.”

“This is as calm as I’m going to get.”

He sighs, then goes into what she has started to think of as lecture mode. “Your current mood is more appropriate for constructing the blade of a Sith. That process involves…”.

She cuts him off before he has the chance to really get going. “I do not want a Sith blade.”

“Of course not,” he agrees, “that’s not you.” He straightens up. “Now close your eyes.”

She does as he asks, and they sit in silence for a moment while she fidgets.

“Rey,” he says quietly, and she stills.

“ _There is no emotion, there is peace_ ,” he whispers, and she remembers reading this in one of the Jedi texts. It’s the beginning of the Jedi Code.

 _He still remembers_ , she thinks in surprise, and reaches out to sense him in the Force.

Rey feels his warmth, and his steady heartbeat, and a gentleness that she recognizes from that night in the hut when he listened with support and understanding. She feels herself begin to center around him, as she feels him centering around her. She knows she relaxes in his presence, and she doesn’t know why, but right now she doesn’t need to know. She just needs to feel, so that’s all she does, and she joins him in weaving a circle of calm around them both.

“Are you ready?” He asks after a while.

“I don’t know how to start,” she tells him, without anxiety, simply a statement of fact.

He pauses for a moment, then asks, “Let me in?” There is a spike of anxiety from him, as if he fears her reaction, and she reaches out to calm him.

 _Yes_ , she says, but she doesn’t speak out loud. She tells him in her thoughts, and when she feels his relief she knows he’s heard her. And just like that she is watching a memory, lightsaber components rising in the air, a blue crystal moving slowly into place as a young Ben Solo assembles his first lightsaber, and she is not only watching, but she is absorbing _how_ he is doing it, feeling his concentration and his process.

Then the memory withdraws, and from behind closed eyes she is watching her own lightsaber components rise from the floor, drifting slowly around each other in a beautiful dance, and she concentrates on aligning them harmoniously. It is _amazing_ to feel how right it is when the pieces begin to connect properly, there is no other word for it but _amazing_ , and she feels tears of rightness, of belonging, gathering at the corners of her eyes. 

The lightsaber begins to form, slowly and carefully linking together, and when it is finally finished it lowers itself into her waiting hands.

She opens her eyes to see him watching her in awe, a quiet pride shining in his eyes. “That was...” he says, then stops himself. “You did it.”

Rey wipes a tear from just below her eye and examines her lightsaber. It is exactly as she had sketched it, a double-bladed saberstaff to take advantage of how she is used to fighting, and it should be able to detach in the middle to provide her with two smaller blades for close-up combat. She runs her fingers along the casing, feeling a connection to it that she had never felt with the previous saber, even though it had chosen her in the forest on Starkiller.

 _Thank you_ , she tells him, her mind to his, and hears his voice in her mind, _You’re welcome_.

And then she no longer feels him there, and she looks up, and he is gone.

She takes her saber with her as she climbs into bed, setting it down carefully on the pile of boxes next to her bed. She keeps her eyes on it as she lies down, not wanting to look away. It is hers, and it is _beautiful_ , and she wants to use it, to see what it can do. 

She’ll train with it tomorrow. She can’t wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song I couldn't get out of my head while writing this chapter: "I will Follow You Into the Dark" by Death Cab for Cutie


	4. Under a Blue Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Last Jedi and the Supreme Leader are feeling increasingly isolated in their respective organizations, and the Last Jedi argues with the Supreme Leader about his political philosophy and its consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never forgotten the scene in AOTC in which Padme and Anakin reveal their differing political philosophies, and I felt that any similar Ben and Rey discussion would parallel those lines of discussion. And we all know that Ben's days as Supreme Leader are most likely numbered.

Rey is sitting on her bed, late at night, rubbing the muscles of her leg. She’s been spending almost all her downtime training, getting used to her new lightsaber, and her body has been filing complaint after complaint against her new routine. 

Her body isn’t the only part of her that is in an uproar. Her emotions are a jumbled mess. She knows that she is the object of rampant curiosity; she can feel the hidden eyes on her as she goes through her days. The other members of the Resistance watch her, and they whisper about her, but almost none of them talk to her or sit with her at mealtime. Finn does, of course, and so does her newest friend, Rose; they are the only ones who truly socialize with her. Poe will talk to her, but he leaves her feeling wary; she can’t shake the feeling that he is taking the measure of how useful she can be to the Resistance. Leia treats her with genuine warmth, but the Resistance is in constant need of the General’s attention, so Rey rarely gets to spend any time with her.

She lets out a wistful sigh. As much as Rey loves spending time with Leia, she is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with lying about so many things. The news has spread through the galaxy that she was the one who killed Snoke, and she has not shared the truth with anyone, and especially not with Leia. It is so inextricably bound up in her relationship with the leader of the First Order, who is their enemy, and Leia’s son, and her…well, she doesn’t know exactly what he is to her, other than important.

She cannot deny that he is important to her, if only for the way the Force keeps connecting them.

She does not know how to explain that to his mother. She knows she could never explain it to the rest of the Resistance.

Rey sighs again and stands to unwind her hair from its tight, flat braid around her head. She has been doing mechanical work in very tight spaces lately, and has been tying it up to keep it from catching on random pieces of machinery; but the braid gives her a headache every time she wears it, and it prevents her from sleeping comfortably. She spends most of the time that she’s wearing it longing for the day to end so she can unravel it again.

She shakes her head briskly once her hair is loose, enjoying the relief, and as she is rubbing her scalp she feels the quiet, sinuous tangle of the Force that announces their connection. 

He stands, facing slightly away from her at an angle, his gloved hands clenching and releasing at his sides, in full Supreme Leader dress. He is always tense when he is wearing his work clothes, but at the moment he feels more taut than usual to her. Rey tucks her hair behind her ear as she tries to sort through the turbulent emotions emanating from him, but she can’t get a grip on any of them. There are too many, and they are changing too quickly.

“What is it?” She asks after a moment, when he has neither spoken nor turned to look at her.

He clears his throat, then in a hoarse voice, he says, “Caestarea.”

Caestarea is a mining planet, Rey knows that. She doesn’t know anything else, so she waits for him to continue.

“You haven’t heard yet,” he says, almost to himself.

“No,” she says, her breath catching in her chest. “I don’t think I want to.”

“It was bad.” He still hasn’t looked at her, but she cannot stop looking at him. “It was a massacre.”

Rey hears herself make a noise, a sort of gasp, and when he hears it he says quickly, “It was not under my orders. I did not intend it to happen.”

Anger flashes through her, sharp and swift, and she says bitingly, “But you’re the Supreme Leader. You make the decisions.”

He is shaking his head before she even finishes. “No. It was a rogue general and the battalions under his command. We had negotiated a compromise with the ruling cartels and he had been explicitly told there were to be no casualties. But he took offense at something that happened and decided to teach everyone a lesson.” He waits to see if she’ll speak, and oh how she wants to, she has so many words she’d like to unleash upon him, but she wants to make him do the talking. She wants to hear him try to justify this. 

After a moment, he looks at her and says, “He’s gone now.”

She clenches her jaw and says nothing.

“You need to understand,” he says, his voice intense, “This is not what I want to do.”

She can’t hold back any longer. “Then what the hell _do_ you want to do?” She bursts out, her voice rising. “Because I don’t understand any of this! You’re not a stupid man. How do you not see that this is _exactly_ what the First Order is, what it was started for? It’s terror and murder and tyranny!”

“No.” He takes a step towards her, but she stands where she is, refusing to back down. “It will not be that way.” He lowers his head slightly, closer to her, his eyes never leaving hers. “Right now, there is war, yes, but consolidation of power is always difficult.”

“ _Consolidation of power_.” She spits the words back at him.

“I know you didn’t have much knowledge of the greater politics of the Republic, growing up on Jakku,” he says, and when she narrows her eyes and starts to respond he raises his voice forcefully, “but I saw all of it from the inside, the corruption and the greed, the dishonesty, the absolute inability to agree to any positive forward movement. I saw what happens when there is a lack of strong central leadership. Once I have established firm control I can begin to reform the way business is done, so progress will actually be made and life will be better for everyone.”

“A benevolent dictator.” Her voice is scornful. 

“There will be nominal representation from the systems, but yes, I will maintain ultimate control.” He takes another step towards her. _One or two more steps_ , Rey thinks, and _we’ll be close enough to touch_ , and she is furious with herself for the thought, because touching him is the last thing she wants to do right now. “Please understand,” he says, his voice lower and calmer, “with the right person in charge, making decisions for the betterment of all….”

Rey interrupts him. “But what if it’s not the right person? What if the person in charge is like Snoke, or like one of your generals?”

“That’s not how it will be,” he says again. “I’m in charge. I can control everything.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know what will happen. It’s dangerous to have all power rest in one person, it’s too easy to lose that control or have it taken from you. You’re where you are now because you killed Snoke and then stepped into his place.”

She’s expecting him to argue with her, tell her that he will always hold control, but he doesn’t. He takes a deep breath, and she senses his uneasiness across the bond.

“What?” She asks, then remembers the general who disobeyed orders, the one who is now gone, and she remembers the generals he spoke of before, the ones who did not agree with his decisions. She has a clear picture in her mind of one in particular, red-headed and cruel, whom he hates and who hates him. This one wants to be Supreme Leader, and will be more than happy to kill his way to the top. She does not know how she sees this, how she knows this, but she does.

 _There’s going to be a coup_ , she realizes. _If it’s not already planned, it will be soon. And he knows it’s coming_.

“He can’t do anything,” she says out loud, reassuring herself. “You’re too strong in the Force, he’d never be able to get near you.”

“He has the military.” He shakes his head. “And as you know, it is a large military. I’m not _that_ powerful, Rey.”

She cannot think clearly, but she takes a step towards him and says, “Then please, get out of there.”

He glares at her and steps away from her. “Don’t ask me to come to the Resistance again. You know I won’t do that.”

“I’m not. Go somewhere else, anywhere else.”

“Where?” He asks. 

It’s a simple question, one for which she has no immediate answer. 

“It won’t come to anything, if I’m careful and if I can out-think him,” he tells her. “And this is the choice that I made. I have to take what comes with it. I have to see it through.”

“No, you don’t,” she insists, casting about for ideas. “There are any number of places where you could just disappear, in the Outer Rim, the Unknown Regions…”.

“I will not be able to _just disappear_ ,” he says.

“Luke did,” she snaps back.

His eyes darken. “I will _not_ run away like that murderer.”

Rey’s about to remind him that he’s a murderer too, but she knows it would make things even worse and she wants him to listen to her. So she says nothing.

They stand in silence for a moment, just looking at each other. Her heart is beating fast, almost jerking in her chest, and she wants more than anything to reach out and hold onto him; but she isn’t sure she’d be able to touch him through the bond again, especially given how badly she is shaking.

She realizes that she is afraid for him, more afraid than she thought she could be.

“Please,” she says, her voice small and quivering, and in her mind she sees falling embers and his outstretched hand and the look on his face as he said that word to her, and she knows he is seeing the same thing.

“Rey,” he says, and she can barely hear him.

She feels the bond closing, and she doesn’t understand quite how she can feel it, or how she knows that he can feel it as well.

“No!” She says, hoping that will be enough to keep it open.

It isn’t. 

He is gone.

“No!” She says again, and then, in a whisper, she implores, “Come back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Killing Moon", Echo and the Bunnymen


	5. A Little Closer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Last Jedi tries to figure out how to reach the Supreme Leader without waiting for the Force to open the connection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not quite sure about the description of Rey learning to "find" Ben, but I'm happy that I finally ended a chapter with somewhat of a cliffhanger (I've been writing most of them as if they were one-shots).

The bond closed almost an hour ago, but Rey can’t stop pacing, and as she paces, she thinks.

The strength of the bond had already been increasing; it had been opening more and more frequently, and last time they were able to detect when it was about to end. And she has knowledge of things that she shouldn’t – the coup, Hux – and it can only be coming from him. She has received information from him before, some Jedi techniques, how to fight with a lightsaber; she always believed she had acquired this knowledge when they pushed into each other’s minds in the interrogation room on Starkiller. 

When he was helping her build the lightsaber, she’d let him in, and their minds had briefly touched once again. Now Rey has this feeling, as if they were being _knit together_ through the bond, as if whatever they shared was being accelerated.

She has never tried to direct the bond in any way; she has simply accepted what the Force was willing to give her. She believes that she is an instrument of the Force, not the other way around, and she holds to that belief still. But she doesn’t know what is happening to him now, where he is, what he’s facing, if he’s even alive, and she refuses go on like this, helplessly waiting for whatever contact comes her way.

Rey is done with simple compliance.

She will not do as he does, bending the Force to her will. That would be a mistake, she knows. But there’s no reason she can’t open herself more completely to the Force, no reason she can’t ask for its help. She can perhaps encourage the bond to strengthen even more, and possibly even speed up whatever process is happening between them.

She sits on her bed and prepares for meditation, but she is jumpy and anxious, and she cannot focus until she remembers the last time she did this, with him, before building the lightsaber. She thinks of how they spun circles of calm around each other, his warmth, his voice as he whispered part of the Jedi Code. She centers herself around these thoughts and relaxes into the Force.

_Please_ , she thinks. _I don’t want to control anything, but I need to find him. I need to know how he is. This is so important, please, just show me how to find him._ Then she opens her mind.

Rey can feel the gentle rush and flow of the Force through her body, like blood through her veins; she senses how it swirls through the galaxy, touching the lives that it encounters, and she can feel it more strongly in some lives than in others. There are other Force sensitives out there, she can almost see them, like bright lights scattered across her vision, and she knows that she will meet most of them eventually; but there is only one person she wants to find now, and she reaches out for him in her mind, mentally raising her hand as she does when she wants to summon something to her through the Force. When she does this, she sees a glimmering, reddish tendril of mist that looks almost like a ribbon. It winds around her hand and trails off into the distance, and she follows it with her thoughts, focusing on how he feels to her when their minds touch, on how it felt to touch his hand.

And there he is, at the end of the tendril, with the mist winding around him. She cannot see him, just his essence, which is a swirling cacophony of light and dark, in constant churning motion. When he shines, he is the strongest, brightest light of all; when the darkness surges up, it seems to erase him completely. 

She watches in breathless awe as the whorls of light and dark dance around each other.

He is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.

_I need to be able to find him any time_ , she thinks. _I don’t need him to know I’m there; I just need to be able to check in. Please. Is that possible?_

And she knows that it is, indeed, possible. Now that she’s seen his essence, his signature in the Force, she knows how to focus and find him again, whenever she wants.

When Rey opens her eyes again, she is peaceful and relaxed, and she is smiling.  
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Rey practices checking in throughout the next day, reaching out to feel for him, relieved when she senses him, even if most of the time he feels angry, anxious, or tense. As unpleasant as those emotions are, they are standard issue for him, and they mean that he is still alive.

She knows that those who work with her in the repair section have been exchanging glances all day, and she knows it’s because the checking in takes enough of her attention to make her seem noticeably absent-minded. Rose comes over and asks if she is all right; Rey nods and smiles, but doesn’t comment, and when she sees the concerned look on Rose’s face she decides to stop checking in for the rest of the day.

So after the evening meal, when everyone else heads for the unofficial lounge area to play cards, talk, and generally relax with each other, she makes her excuses and hurries back to her room. Once the door closes behind her, she leans back on it and closes her eyes, searching for him.

Rey hasn’t quite found him yet when the Force weaves its quiet way into the room, and she opens her eyes to find him back in his chair (yep, _still black_ ), dressed as Supreme Leader, his gloved hands tented in front of him.

He doesn’t look up at her, not until she steps away from the door, and the movement startles him briefly.

“That’s odd,” he muses. “I didn’t think…”. He trails off, lost in thought.

“You didn’t think what?”

He spins the chair so that he is facing her directly. “That we would actually connect. I’ve felt like we have been about to do, on and off, for most of today, but then, well, you haven’t been there.” He tilts his head to the side, considering. “I wonder why that’s happening?”

Her first reaction is to make sure she has blocked him from her mind, which she has; she doesn’t want him to know how anxious she’s been, how she’s been driven to try to find him throughout the day. 

So he can sense her, even when she’s just giving him a quick look-in.

_Are we starting to bleed into each other, with our thoughts?_ She wonders, and his mouth twitches.

“It certainly seems that way,” he confirms.

It is her turn to be startled. She hadn’t spoken out loud, but he’d heard the question anyway.

He sighs. “This has the potential to be somewhat uncomfortable.”

“Awkward,” she offers, and he nods.

And because she can never leave anything well enough alone, she asks, “Have you thought any more about leaving the First Order and going somewhere safe?”

“Rey,” he says over the end of her sentence, sounding tired, “not this again.”

“Yes,” she tells him, “this again.”

He stands abruptly, stepping away from her, and she can still see the chair even though he’s no longer in it. This does not surprise her as much as she thought it would. He is facing away from her, as if looking out a window, which he very well may be doing.

“Why not?” She takes a few steps forward as if to follow him.

“Damn it,” he mutters, then turns to her. “You are the most stubborn person I have ever met.” He is clearly exasperated, but Rey thinks there’s another look in his eyes, almost a fondness, although she is sure she is reading his expression wrong.

“We’ve talked about this,” he reminds her. “There is nowhere I can go to just disappear. And I have responsibilities.”

“What about your responsibility to stay alive?” She retorts.

He shrugs. _What about it?_

_What do you mean, what about it?_ She thinks at him, and out loud asks, “What the hell kind of thing is that to say?”

“I’m simply saying,” he responds, “that if this situation does not end well, then at least everything will finally be over.”

She is shaking her head before he even finishes. “No. I don’t accept that. You will not say that. You cannot mean that.”

“Can you honestly tell me that your life wouldn’t be easier if I were gone?” His voice is quiet.

“Of course it would be _easier_ ,” she says, angry tears beginning to well up in her eyes, “but life isn’t meant to be easy, or even happy for that matter. It’s just meant to be life, and you live it, and you do the best you can do.”

He gazes at her for a moment, his forehead creasing as he thinks, then asks, “You think life isn’t supposed to be happy?”

“Why would it be?” She is glaring now, trying to keep the tears from spilling over.

_Have you ever been happy, Rey?_

“What even _is_ happy?” She shrugs off the question, but then she remembers.

_Firelight, two hands touching_

_You’re not alone_

_Neither are you_

_Standing with him, about to fight for their lives_

_The feeling between them in that moment_

_The way he looked at her_

And she knows that he sees these memories too.

“Yes,” she answers softly, “I have been happy. Have you?”

He gazes at her for a moment, as if he is memorizing her face, and then he says, “Yes.”

She steps towards him, her tear-filled eyes fixed on his, until she is right in front of him, up close.

“Then please, Ben,” she says, and he takes a quick breath at the sound of his name, “Please be safe. Please don’t leave me.” She can see his mouth working, like he wants to say something but can’t, and she reaches out towards him.

Before she can touch him, a feeling slams into her. There’s a disturbance in the Force, a gaping almost-hole, and its sudden appearance terrifies her. She searches through him with the Force, to see if something’s happened to him, but he is still standing as he was before, although he is wide-eyed with shock and looking her over from head to toe.

“You’re all right?” He asks urgently.

She nods. “Are you?”

“Yes,” he says. “What…?”

“I don’t know,” she says, although what she’s feeling is oddly familiar, almost like when Luke….

The realization hits them both at the same time, or maybe it hits one of them and then passes to the other. She turns and runs for the door as he shouts in panic. “Go! Rey, go fast!”

And then she is out in the corridor, heart bursting with pain, running at full speed towards Leia’s quarters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Stay" Rihanna


	6. Night That Finds Us All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Last Jedi delivers something to the Supreme Leader, in fulfillment of his mother's wishes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot imagine that Ben would not be deeply affected by his mother's death, and I cannot imagine that Rey would not be there for him.

Rey sits on the floor of her room, staring at the folded letter she is holding. She has never seen a handwritten personal letter before, let alone one written on such beautiful paper. With her finger, she slowly traces the strong, scripted name written across the outside, whispering it under her breath.

_Ben._

She had checked in on him as soon as possible after leaving Leia’s quarters, and she could feel his deep sorrow. He must have felt Leia’s passing; he wouldn’t need her to tell him about it. Still, she knows that he is alone, and he is grieving, and she had promised Leia that she would give him the letter. Or at least try to give him the letter; she’s not sure he will even take it. While finding him has become easier with practice, she has never attempted to open the bond herself. 

But if there was ever a time to do so, it is now.

She closes her eyes, centers herself, and asks the Force to allow her one more favor.

When she finds him in the Force, she is momentarily at a loss for what to do next. She has never thought about how to open the bond, and she’s not sure if she _can_ do it. She can feel him, he’s so close, and the thought of not seeing him now, not being able to comfort him or give him the letter from his mother, brings tears to her eyes. She focuses on him and thinks, _Please_. She thinks of his eyes, his hands, his voice, his signature of swirling light and darkness.

“Rey.”

She opens her eyes. He is there, in front of her, in gloves and black cape and the rest of the Supreme Leader uniform. He stands exhausted, as if the weight of an entire system lay on his shoulders, a lost expression on his face.

She scrambles to her feet. “I wanted to come to you right away, but the bond didn’t open.”

He shakes his head. “It’s all right. I know we can’t control it.”

“But that’s the thing.” She steps closer to him. “I think I may have opened it myself, just now.”

He starts slightly, then his expression shifts a bit; still tired, but farther from sorrow, closer to interest. “How?”

“I’m not completely sure. It’s not a process with a checklist or anything.” She tries to put words to something that she’s not quite certain about yet herself. “I thought of you. _Really_ thought of you. Your essence or whatever.” She looks at him, then says simply, “I wanted to see you, very much.”

Rey thinks she sees a slight hitch in his breathing.

He is silent for a moment, then says, “We could possibly contact each other whenever we want.”

“Yes.” And she sees an opening for giving him the letter. “At least, it happened this time. It was an experiment. And I’d like to try another. I want to see if we can pass things to each other through the bond.”

He shrugs. “We can.”

Her eyebrows wrinkle in confusion. “What?”

“When we were first connected, when you were with Luke, we had one particular conversation. The one when you called me a _murderous snake_.” She gives a rueful sigh, and thinks she sees the hint of a smirk at the corners of his mouth. “It was raining. Am I right?”

“Yes,” she says slowly. “How do you know?”

“There was water on my face, afterwards.”

“I was standing by the ocean, as well,” she remembers. “The waves were high, they kept crashing along the rocks where I stood.”

“Whether it was ocean water or rain water, it came through on my side.” He nods. “So things can pass through the bond.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” She demands.

“You didn’t ask.”

She huffs in annoyance.

“Was there something particular that you wanted to try to pass through?” He asks, his eyes moving to her hands.

She takes a deep breath. “Yes. This.” She holds the letter up.

“Actual paper? That’s unusual, that’s…” He goes still suddenly, then says in a low voice, “That’s my mother’s handwriting.”

“It’s for you,” Rey tells him.

“No,” he says quickly, turning away from her, and she steps towards him.

“She wanted you to have it. Ben, please.”

“I can’t…” he whispers, then falls silent. She waits as he stands there, his hands clenching and unclenching, his head bowed. He is fighting some internal battle; she can feel the clash of emotions, rage, sorrow, longing, fear.

Finally, he speaks. “What does it say?”

“I didn’t read it. It’s yours.”

He turns to look at her, and when he does she holds the letter out to him in a silent request, her expression firm. The muscles under his left eye twitch slightly, and then slowly, so slowly, he treads across the floor to her, and he swallows hard as he puts out his hand to take the paper. Just before he touches it, he pulls his hand back. She is about to protest, but stays silent when he pulls off his gloves and drops them to the floor. 

She feels her heart beat faster when he reaches back up and takes the letter from her and unfolds the paper.

“I’ll try to go now,” Rey says, edging back away from him. “You should have some privacy.”

“No.” He says, and looks up from the letter, his eyes wide and vulnerable. “Please stay.”

She nods. _All right. I’ll stay as long as I can._

He moves to the desk – his desk, and she can _see_ it, and the paper and inkwell and the holopad on it – and pulls out the chair. He puts his hand on it and looks at her, then moves to sit on her cot. She pulls the chair closer to him, sits facing him, and watches as he reads the letter.

It is two pieces of paper, small neat handwriting on three of the four sides. He reads quickly, as if he is desperate to see what it will say next; when he gets to the end, he looks at it for a moment, thinking, then turns back to the beginning and reads more slowly.

Rey keeps her eyes off the letter, and tries not to read his emotions, because this is so personal and he should be able to hold it private. Some of what he feels bleeds through into her mind anyway; desolation, anger, resignation, shame, love. When he finishes the second reading, he folds the letter back up and just sits, looking down at it.

“I always thought…” he starts, but does not finish.

Rey does not know what to do. She knows what she _wants_ to do, which is to comfort him somehow, but she isn’t sure how to go about it. She knows he’s not comfortable with being touched right now. She wasn’t either, right after, even though it was Finn who hugged her as she cried and she is more comfortable with his touch than with anyone’s (well, almost anyone’s). There isn’t anything she can think of to say to him, either; the loss is too enormous for any words. There is nothing she can do for him, so she continues to sit, her eyes never leaving him.

“How did you find this?” Ben asks, and she knows what he is thinking; the existence of this letter would not be general knowledge, it would have been hidden away somewhere.

“She told me where it was,” Rey answers. “She asked me to give it to you.” 

He looks up, his eyes bleak but curious, and she continues, “She was very weak, so she couldn’t exactly talk.” He winces. “But I heard her. Like you and I have been able to do, lately, even if we aren’t _talking_ talking.”

“She asked _you_ to give this to me,” he restates, and Rey nods. “Why would she…”

“I think she knew something about us, about this,” she says, gesturing to the air in between them. “I don’t think she knew anything in particular, but she seemed to know that I could get it to you, and that I would.”

A look of alarm comes into his eyes. “Was there anyone else there when you found it?”

Rey shakes her head. “No,” she says. “Not then. Not until after.”

He relaxes slightly, returning his gaze to the letter, his thumb rubbing back and forth over it, slowly and gently. His chin is trembling, and Rey wants very much to put her hand against the side of his cheek, but she doesn’t.

He takes a deep breath, then looks up at her and says, “Show me.”

Rey should ask if he’s really sure he wants to see, but she knows that he is. She should remind him to not look at anything else in her mind, but she knows that he won’t. She nods, closes her eyes, and opens to him as she remembers.

 

_Rey had pushed open the door to Leia’s quarters as soon as she got there to find the general lying on her side on the floor next to her bed, motionless, her eyes closed._

_“Leia! Leia!” Rey gasped, rushing to her and taking her hand. It was cold and so, so still, but as Rey held it, Leia’s eyes fluttered open._

_“Hang on,” Rey said frantically, “I’ll get someone to help you, just stay with me.”_

_**No, Rey, please.** _

_Leia’s voice was clear and warm, as it always was when she spoke to Rey._

_Except that her lips hadn’t moved._

_**I need your help with something before I go.** _

_Rey sat there, dumbfounded, the tears she’d been fighting on her dash through the corridors now beginning to slide down her cheeks._

_“No,” she told Leia, shaking her head insistently, “No, don’t go anywhere, you can stay here, stay with us, stay with me.”_

_**Sweetheart, it’s my time,** Leia reassured her. **And I don’t have much time left, so please listen, this is important to me.**_

_Rey choked back a sob, kissing Leia’s hand, holding it against her own cheek. “Anything,” she promised. “Anything you want.”_

_**I know my son is with you.** _

_Rey gasped and turned quickly to look for Ben behind her. Had he followed her to his mother’s room? Could Leia see him, and could he see her?_

_He wasn’t there, though, and Rey felt Leia’s hand stir in hers, fingers unfurling to gently touch Rey’s head._

_**He’s with you here,** Leia told her. **I’ve been feeling him with you for a while now. I’m right, aren’t I?**_

_Rey closed her eyes and nodded, her stomach clenching as she tried to hold back more sobs._

_**In the bottom drawer of my desk, there is a letter for him. He’ll need it, and I need for him to have it.** _

_Rey opened her eyes and found that Leia’s had closed._

_“No,” she pleaded, her face wet and flushed. “A little longer, Leia, please.”_

_**Rey. I am so glad it’s you.** _

_Then Rey felt an absence, an emptiness, and the voice was gone. She started weeping in earnest, bending to lay her head against Leia’s chest, hoping for even a faint heartbeat. There was none. She stayed like that, bent over the body of the woman who had been the closest thing to a mother that she’d ever had, sobbing. She cried for her own loss, for the Resistance’s loss, and for Ben’s loss. So much was lost with Leia, so much wisdom, and love, and possibility. There were so many things that would never be said, so many wounds that would never be healed face to face._

_When her tears subsided somewhat, Rey moved to the desk, hoping that the letter wasn’t too difficult to find. It was hidden away in the bottom of the drawer, but Rey found it quickly, almost as if she was being guided to it. Once she found it, she tucked it into her pocket and found Leia’s comm. She held onto it, not wanting to let anyone else know, not wanting any of it to be real._

_But it was real, and people did need to know. She took a deep breath and pressed it._

_“Finn?” She asked. Then she broke down in tears again._

 

Rey opens her eyes to see him sitting in front of her clutching the letter, a heartbroken look in his glistening eyes. 

“She was like the mother you never had,” he says.

She shakes her head, sniffling, because this isn’t about her, it’s about him. “That’s not important.”

“It’s important to me,” he tells her, quiet and insistent, his tears beginning to escape over the rim of his eyes. 

She stands and goes to him, then, and he wraps his arms around her waist and buries his face in her stomach. She holds him as he shakes, her face resting on the top of his head, her tears dampening his hair.

When they feel the bond beginning to close, he pulls his head back and looks up at her, takes a deep breath, and nods, reassuring her that he is all right. She nods back in acknowledgement, and to let him know that she is all right too, and then the bond closes and he is gone.

She is wiping the tears from her face when there is a knock on the door.

“Rey? Are you there?” Finn.

“Give me a minute,” she says, taking a deep breath and shaking herself out a little before going to open the door.

“I need to tell you about something,” he says, and from the look on his face it will not be good. He checks down the corridor to see if anyone else is around. 

“Come in,” she says, and leans out after him to check the corridor herself before closing the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Passing Afternoon", Iron & Wine
> 
> The last image of the two of them, the embrace, has its basis in so much gorgeous fan art where they're embracing in a similar fashion. There are multiple artists who have done versions of it, and I can't link them all, but they're all wonderful. Ever since I saw the first one, I've been thinking that it is how they would comfort each other.


	7. Closing Walls and Ticking Clocks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Last Jedi faces a dilemma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has read this little fic, especially to those of you who have left kudos! It is truly humbling to see that you all have read it, and I am so grateful!

Rey charges along the corridor, her expression thunderous and her hands clenched.

“Rey.” Finn is behind her, almost running to keep up. “Hold up, take a minute.”

And there he is, brightly grinning while he back-slaps some of the other pilots as they walk away from him, laughing.

“ _POE DAMERON!_ ” Everyone in the corridor turns towards her, mouths open in surprise at the sight of their usually quiet Jedi bearing down upon their newest general with a clear desire to tear him a new one. Poe’s brow creases in surprise for just a moment, until he sees Finn behind her; then his expression settles into what looks almost like defiance.

“Rey,” he says evenly, nodding towards the nearby doorway. “Want to talk?”

“ _Yes I do_ ,” she hisses, storming through the doorway into the room he had claimed as a command office.

Finn follows her, standing at her back. “Calm down,” he whispers behind her. “Because this will not help.”

She snorts derisively.

Poe closes the door behind him, his jaw clenched, and warily moves towards her.

“Well?” He says. 

He is not sporting the trademark Poe Dameron smile. At least he has the sense not to try to charm her.

“You cannot do this,” she tells him, her eyes fierce.

Poe looks at Finn and shakes his head, then turns his attention back to Rey.

“First of all,” he starts, “this is a command decision. You are not part of command.”

She begins to speak, but he raises his voice to cut her off.

“ _Secondly_ , we are not in any position for any kind of battle. At this point, we can do some hit-and-run attacks, but only a few. So we have to pick our targets very carefully, for maximum effect.”

“So target weapons plants, or shipyards,” she argues. “We know the First Order took tremendous losses in those areas, they’ve got to be rebuilding. Make it difficult for them to rebuild.”

He sighs almost patiently. “The First Order expects those to be targets, so they’ve got a lot of protection deployed there. They don’t expect us to go after the on-planet trooper training facilities. The protection there will be as minimal as we need, and we can reduce their armies even more than they were reduced when the Supremacy blew. Taking down more of their soldiers is vital, Rey. And if we can wipe out the training facilities, it’s not just the manpower that’s gone. They’ll have to rebuild it all and that will take a lot of time.”

She glares at him. “But there are _children_ in those training facilities. You’ve talked to Finn, you know how this works, they kidnap children and raise and train them in those facilities. When you talk about wiping out the training facilities, you are talking about killing _children_.”

“They’re not really children,” he answers. “By a very young age, they have been conditioned enough that they are already soldiers. They are already willing to lay down their lives for the First Order, willing to _take_ lives for it. You’ve also talked to Finn, so you know how young it starts. They are enemy combatants.”

“So we’re doing _that_ now, are we?” She clenches her fists and behind her Finn steps closer to her. “Attacking children because of what we believe they may become? And any recent arrivals, that haven't been conditioned yet, they're just collateral damage? That is what the First Order does!” 

Poe shakes his head angrily. “No. No, it’s not!”

Her voice is sharp enough to cut glass. “Then please tell me, how does this make us any different from them?”

Poe looks at her in utter disbelief. “How does this…I don’t understand how you can even ask me that!”

“Because you don’t have an answer!” She shouts, and he moves closer to her, tension coiling around them.

“Because, unlike them, we’re fighting for the _right_ things!” He shouts back. “We’re fighting for freedom from tyranny and oppression, we’re fighting against murderers and tyrants, we’re in it for the greater good of the entire galaxy! This is _war_ , Rey, and we need to win it! I thought you understood that!”

Rey moves up to him, face-to-face, and gives him a deadly glare for a moment before she says, her voice quiet and dangerous, “What I understand is that Leia would _never_ have approved of this.” She hears Finn’s quick intake of breath behind her. It’s true, but it’s also a cheap, hurtful shot. Poe was devastated by Leia’s death, by the fact that he didn’t have a chance to say goodbye; Rey knows he envies her those last few moments, envies how deep her relationship with Leia became and how quickly they became close. 

She is too angry to care. 

She sees the pain in his face, then watches it give way to barely controlled rage. “How long did you know her?” He sounds venomous. “I knew her for _years_ , and I knew her in wartime. I served under her command before you even knew she existed! You have no idea what she would approve and what she wouldn’t. You know nothing about Leia as a general and you are _not_ a member of command. Your job is to support the mechanical end and work on becoming the strongest Jedi that you can so you can bring us victory.” His eyes narrow. “How’s that going, by the way?”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Finn says, inserting himself between them. “Everyone needs to calm down so we can figure this out.”

“There’s no figuring this out, Finn,” Rey snaps, her eyes not leaving Poe’s glare. “He’s either going to do it or he’s not.”

Finn turns to the general. “Poe.” Poe reluctantly looks from Rey to Finn, who gestures away from Rey. “Please.” After a moment Poe exhales in exasperation, turning to walk to the other side of the room.

“Listen,” Finn says to Rey, as quietly as he can. “Let me talk to him. I think I have an idea how to get him off this.”

“I will _kill_ him, Finn,” she whispers through gritted teeth.

He shakes his head. “No, you won’t.”

She rolls her eyes in annoyance, because he’s right.

“Rey, seriously.” Finn says, “Please just go and let me talk to him alone.” She looks at him for a moment. “Trust me,” he says, and she nods, because he’s one of the very few people that she does trust.

She does not look at Poe on her way out of the room, just strides to the door and opens it more forcefully than she needs to do. As she heads back down the corridor, she hears Poe say, “Why the hell did you tell her?” and Finn replying, “I have another idea,” before the door closes.

 

Finn does not show up to tell her what was discussed; even much later, she has not seen or heard from him, and as the hours pass she becomes more and more upset.

What if Poe decides to go ahead with the attack? What if he classifies it so that neither she nor Finn learn of it until after it’s done? He could do that, and what’s more, she is certain that he would do it if he felt it necessary. Maybe he already has.

Rey sits on her bed, her eyes beginning to fill with tears of sadness as well as frustration and anger. Her hands are clenched in fists, and she rubs them against her eyes as she tried to think.

Finn remembers about as much of his real family as she remembers of hers, which is nothing. He was taken from them early in his life, isolated and given a designation instead of a name and exposed to nothing but First Order propaganda until he didn’t realize anything else existed. He was an innocent, warped and weaponized by the First Order, and so are all the other children in the training facilities. None of them deserved what happened to them, and none of them deserve to die for it, either.

If Rey can do anything to stop that, she will. The question is, what can she do?

Poe will not listen to her, especially after the things she said to him during their confrontation. Rey groans, thinking about her tendency to react first, regret later. On Jakku, survival was dependent on quick, nearly thoughtless reaction; in her current life, that type of reaction is more dangerous. She cannot afford to go running off on impulse anymore. She will have to think of some strategy to change Poe’s mind or to stop him.

There’s a tug at the back her mind, very faint, and she opens her eyes to see if she is still alone; thankfully, she is. He’s only checking on her, or practicing doing so. Good. The last person she wants to see right now is the kriffing _Supreme Leader_. She doesn’t want to have to spend the energy to block her mind from him, and she doesn’t want to betray the Resistance, even unintentionally, by allowing him to see anything about the proposed attack on the stormtrooper training facilities. If he knew, he’d strengthen the protection around them or evacuate them or….

Her breathing stops for a moment. _If he knew, he could make sure it didn’t happen._

All she would have to do to stop the attack is just tell him, or let him see it in her mind. Just that, and this horrible thing would not happen.

But other horrible things would happen. The Resistance would still mount the attack, and the First Order would be waiting to blow them out of the sky. People she knew, people she’d talked to and eaten with, would be killed or captured. The First Order might even find out where the base was and end them all, and any hope of a free galaxy along with them.

 _But we_ chose _to fight_ , she thinks. _Those children did not, at least not willingly._

Her stomach is churning, and she is shaking as she goes back and forth from one argument to another.

How does someone weigh out what to do, she wonders, whom to choose, whom to sacrifice? Because there will be death and sacrifice, there is no doubt. Should she weigh the fact that some had no choice in their future against the fact that some chose their fate? Should it be by age, children against adults? How about basing it on the numbers, on how many people would die on each side? Or should it simply come down to her loyalty to the Resistance? She can’t betray them. They are her friends, her colleagues, the first home she’d ever really had, the people she loves.

But if she doesn’t do anything to stop this, she will have the deaths of children on her conscience. Innocent children. Children like Finn once was.

_“All the choices could be bad ones, and I would still have to make the decision.”_

He’d said that once, when she was furious with him for the attack on Atharas.

There’s another tug deep inside of her mind, as if he knows she just thought of him, and all she wants right now is to be able to talk about this with someone who understands, someone who could help her untangle the whole mess and figure out the right thing to do, or if there even is a right thing to do. She wants, more than anything, to talk it through with him.

But she can’t, because he is who he is. Because he didn’t come back with her to the Resistance. Because he chose being Supreme Leader over being with her.

Rey feels the change in the Force, the winding rush of the connection. She looks up, and there he is, his face pale with worry as his eyes search her face.

“Rey, what is it? You’re so upset, I can feel….” He begins moving towards her. “What’s wrong?”

His voice is anxious but gentle, as if he actually cares, and all she wants is to be held as she cries and unburdens herself to someone who knows what she feels.

But he is who he is, and when it comes right down to it she cannot betray her friends.

She slams down a wall in her mind, so that he can read nothing. He’ll still get a few things around the edges, but those won’t tell him anything other than that she’s upset. And he can plainly see that for himself.

He stills immediately, looking at her in confusion.

She looks straight into his eyes and hisses, “ _Get away_.”

She sees hurt on his face for a moment before his internal shields go up and he stares at her impassively.

“Why?” He asks, as if he is only mildly curious.

“Because _I don’t want you here_ ,” she snaps, infuriated by the fact that she does want him here, very much.

He gives her a nod and the slightest of bows, and the sarcastic courtesy of the gesture stings. “Very well,” he says, and he is gone.

She wraps her arms around her waist and sits alone in her silent room, her thoughts tangled and tumbling as she waits to hear from Finn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Clocks" by Coldplay


	8. A Crack in the Shell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Resistance moves ahead with a new plan, and the Supreme Leader and the Last Jedi engage in a battle of blunt truths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm super bad at actual plot, but I'm trying to work on it, especially now that this is actually a Long Form Thing rather than just a one-shot look at their relationship in the aftermath of Crait.
> 
> Thank you for reading and I hope you find at least some of it enjoyable!

Finn had stopped by briefly, a couple of hours later; he was tired and on edge, and all he told her was that Poe had accepted his idea and they’d had to spend a long time planning it.

“We’re not done with it yet,” he’d said. “It’s going to take a lot, but we’re risking fewer lives this way and there’s maybe a much bigger payoff, so he’s shelved the attack on the training facilities for now.”

She’d wanted to ask questions, but he had seemed tired so she had urged him to get some sleep. 

It had occurred to her, in the light of the next day cycle, that it was probably best that she didn’t know too many of the details, now that Ben could find her as easily as she could find him and thoughts seemed to cross more easily between them.

She couldn’t help but remember the flash of hurt on his face when she’d told him she didn’t want him there, the sudden, coldly impassive look he’d assumed immediately afterwards, and his biting formality when he closed the bond. She hadn’t felt him in the back of her mind since then, although she’d been waiting for him.

 _It’s for the best_ , Rey assures herself as she heads towards the mess hall. _You really can’t be spending time with an enemy that can read your mind_. She had to hide the bond from the Resistance, she had to hide anything about the Resistance from him; it was exhausting to have to hide so many things from so many different people. Best to keep the bond closed, best to keep him away.

But. He was her…what, friend? No, you can’t think of your enemy that way. Confidante? She couldn’t tell him everything, so no. He was important, though. He was an important person.

Why did he make his _kriffing stupid_ choices like he did? Why couldn’t he just….

“Rey!” She turns to find Finn behind her in the corridor, and she waits as he runs up to her; they meet in the middle of the hub where several corridors come together, and he has to weave between people to get to her. “I’m glad I caught you.” He is breathing heavily from his quick dash, and he has a particularly intense look on his face. “We’re leaving soon, very soon, about a quarter of an hour.”

“What?” A cold jolt shoots through Rey’s body; she hadn’t expected this, not yet. And like an idiot, she hadn’t fully realized that Finn would be a part of whatever was going to happen. 

Her heart is racing in her chest as he goes on. “I’m sorry, I should have told you last night how quickly this was moving. I thought I’d have a little more time to tell you about it.”

“No, no, that’s all right,” she reassures him. He thinks too much about others sometimes, and he’ll need all his concentration for what lies ahead of him. “I’m the last thing you need to worry about.”

“I don’t know what Poe is willing to tell you,” Finn continues. “But I want you to know what’s happening, in case…well.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m going back. I’m taking some others with me, we’re going to do what we can to turn the troops against the First Order. It won’t be easy, but it is doable.”

Rey is astounded. “What? How?” He begins to explain, but she interrupts, “No, stop, I shouldn’t know the details. I probably shouldn’t even know this much.”

“No, it’s all right,” Finn says. “I trust you.”

 _You shouldn’t_ , she thinks sadly.

Then another question occurs to her. “Why didn’t you tell me this is what you were thinking?”

“I was going to.” Finn shrugs. “But when I started giving you the background you just went running off to find Poe and yell at him before I could get to that part. You know how you get when you’re angry.”

“I do not…” she begins to protest, but he interrupts with a smile.

“When we met, you came after me with your staff first thing because you thought I was a thief,” he reminds her.

“Stealing on Jakku could kill someone, it’s basically murder,” she explains. “It can’t be tolerated, you have to...stop laughing at me!”

“I’m not,” he says, rich chuckles breaking through his words, but they drift away into a near sigh when he sees the look on her face. “Not at you. I’m just so glad that I know you.”

“No, “she says, shaking her head. “Do not say _goodbye_. I know it’s a risky mission, but we’ve both been in riskier and we’re here now. You know what you’re doing, you must have good back-up, it’ll be fine.”

“There _are_ good people on this mission. Rose is coming too, and she’s fierce. I did tell you about when she bit the finger, didn’t I?”

She giggles. “I still wish I’d seen that!” Furious little Rose, biting the finger that some First Order general had been sticking in her face. Rey’s favorite part of the story was how when, after Rose let go, she looked into the man’s eyes and spit on the ground. Rey was so glad to have met the feisty mechanic, so glad to count her among her few friends.

Then she realizes what Finn has just told her, and she asks, sounding more forlorn than she intended, “Rose is going too?” 

“Yes,” he says. “I’m sorry we’re leaving you here. We wanted you to be a part of it, but you’ve got a big price on your head, you know? You’re not exactly anonymous.”

“Absolutely right,” she agrees, but her reasons for agreeing with him are ones she can’t share with him.

They look at each other in silence for a moment, and Rey takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to watch your ship fly away,” she tells him, holding out her arms. “Here, then?”

He nods, and they wrap each other up in a tight hug.

“One day, we’ll have another adventure together,” he whispers. “I promise, Rey.”

She nods into his shoulder. “I know.”

When they pull apart, she taps her hands on his shoulders lightly. “I will see you soon, my friend.”

Rose’s voice comes from behind her. “Wait, this is it? You’re not going to see us off?”

Rey turns to see Rose looking sad.

“I don’t like watching people leave,” Rey tells her.

“Oh, of course you don’t,” Rose’s voice was soft. “I understand.” She throws her arms around Rey in a hug that is almost too ferocious for a person of her size.

“Be careful.” Rey gives her an extra squeeze. “I mean, I know you will, but still.”

“It will be fine.” Rose says. “I trust Finn.” Then she hurriedly adds, “And everyone else, too.” Rey stifles a smile.

Finn and Rose begin to walk away, but they’re still turned slightly backwards, so that they can wave to Rey and she can still see their faces.

“Oh, Rey!” Rose yells when they’re almost at the corridor to the hangar. “That one transport pod, at the end of the hangar, the one I’m working on? It’s the stabilizer fin, that’s the problem, see what you can do with it before I get back?”

“Got it!” Rey waves back at them until they disappear around the corner, keeping her face pleasant and positive despite the ache in her chest.

Then she gathers her thoughts together and looks around the hub. Members of the Resistance are bustling through, all with purpose, with somewhere to go, in groups, talking, sometimes laughing. Most give her a wide berth as they walk past, and they don’t even glance her way as they do it. A lone pilot nods at her briefly in passing; she puts a smile on her face when she nods back, but it fades once he has passed by. 

Her facial expressions have become yet another in the series of the dishonesties, small and large, that have begun to define her life.

She stands for a moment, alone in the crowded hub, her thoughts racing and her nerves electric. She doesn’t have to be back in the mechanical wing until later, but she needs to do something, anything, to keep herself from thinking too much. 

She abruptly turns and heads towards the small room that Poe had set aside for her to train in.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She didn’t go to her room to pick up her lightsaber on the way, or to change into her training outfit. As she stops to lean on her staff to catch her breath, she admits to herself that that might have been a mistake. Her clothes are soaked through with sweat; her face is red and flushed, and she is feeling distinctly overheated. So now she has more laundry to do.

Rey hates laundry. 

She picks up the staff again and goes through stances and combat moves at a furious pace. She doesn’t care how much it will hurt tonight, or the fact that she is driving herself dangerously hard. She just needs to hit things, as many things as possible, and she intends to go through every single training dummy that she had painstakingly assembled from bits and scraps. As she thrusts the staff forward, she yells, and her howls echo back from the walls of the tiny, dingy room.

For a moment, she feels a bit dizzy, and she thinks she’s pushed herself too hard, or perhaps yelled so much that she is low on oxygen; but dizzy doesn’t feel like this, like a wild tangle of the Force around her, this feels like….

_Damn it, no!_

His voice is dangerously restrained, his words clipped. “What do you want?”

She turns, scowling, and sees him standing against the wall, a cold look in his eyes. He’s in his work clothes again, although he is missing his overly dramatic cape. Of course he’s got the gloves back on again.

“What do _you_ want?” She shifts the staff in her hands as she faces him. “ _I_ didn’t open it.”

“ _I_ didn’t open it,” he counters, and they both give angry sighs. Apparently they don’t have as much control over the bond as they had begun to imagine.

“Just don’t say anything until it ends,” she tells him, twirling the staff and getting ready to resume punishing the training dummies. “And don’t watch me.” She begins moving at the fastest pace she can, willing him to disappear.

“You’re leading too much with your left foot,” he says immediately, his voice cutting.

“I said _don’t watch me_!” She kicks a training dummy over and turns to face him. “Why are you _you_?” She demands, her voice cracking.

He doesn’t answer, just glares from his place against the wall.

“Why?” She asks again. “With your damn First Order and your _damn kriffing black_ all the time?” She gestures wildly at his outfit.

“Your moods swing faster than lightspeed.” His retort is biting, and he steps forward from the wall, glowering.

“Because of you and your stupid war my friends might die! Others are dying in every system! There is death and pain and starvation everywhere!” She knocks another dummy over with her staff. “For what reason? So you can see the entire galaxy bow before you and tell you how _special_ you are?”

“I have _told_ you…”.

“Oh, spare me your benevolent dictator shit.” Rey is pacing now, back and forth, trying to master her emotions and failing miserably. She always fails miserably at it when _he’s_ around.

“Spare me your holy perfect Resistance shit,” he returns.

“You had a chance,” she snarls. “You didn’t take it.”

“What chance?” His eyes, dark and thunderous, are following her back and forth, back and forth. “You mean when you came to the _Supremacy_? Thinking all you had to do was show up and I’d happily go to prison or the execution chamber?”

“That was not my plan!” She countered.

“Did you even _have_ a plan? What did you think was going to happen? Ah, yes. You presumed that I would turn to the light and join the Resistance, simply because you wanted me to. You risked both of our lives on an idiotic delusion.”

“There is light in you,” she tells him, striding back and forth, shooting angry glances his way. “You cannot tell me it isn’t there, I’ve _seen_ it.”

“And there is dark in you, _faultless_ Jedi.” He is standing still; only his head moves as his eyes follow her movements, and his tone is jeering.

“Nowhere near enough to join you in the First Order.”

“That is not what I asked you to do!” She can feel him growing agitated, or maybe he’s just absorbing her agitation. “You weren’t even listening!”

“I was listening,” she swings the staff in front of her. “I just wasn’t doing what you wanted.”

“What I _asked_ ,” he growls. “And let’s be clear, I _asked_ , I didn’t _presume_. I believe I even said _please_. Your only response was to reach for the lightsaber to try to kill me.”

“I did not!” She stops pacing for a moment in surprise. “I was taking it back so I could leave. It was my weapon, I was going to be moving through hostile territory, of course I was going to want it back!”

“It belonged to my family,” he insists, and she rolls her eyes and starts pacing again. “And if you wanted it, you could have asked. You could have at least _said something_ instead of just grabbing it!”

“Oh, really? You would have just let me go?” Her voice is dripping with disbelief.

“Yes,” he says, and it is a sharp, angry word, one that he clearly does not want to say.

She believes him. But her blood is up and she doesn’t want to think too much about how he must have felt, when she reached for his hand and then, at the last second, tried to summon the lightsaber instead. She just wants to be angry, and to let that anger spill out across the room. Peace and serenity be damned, she’s going to ride this storm through all its waves and swells, and if that makes her a shit Jedi, then so be it. What’s one more pretense on top of all the others?

“So merciful of you.” She points the staff directly at him. “Look at you. Destroying lives all over the galaxy, ruling like a tyrant. I hope it’s making you happy.”

“I am every bit as happy here as you are there,” he says, his tone almost sneering.

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean.” He lowers his voice. “You are trapped where you are, just as much as I am here.”

For a second, she has no response, and it infuriates her that he has managed to shift the conversation. “I am not,” she scoffs.

“Oh, you are,” he answers, his eyes boring into her. “You just aren’t allowing yourself to see it. Your capacity for denial is truly astounding.”

“You’re only trapped because you choose to be,” she shoots back at him, attempting to retake the offensive. “You could leave at any time.”

“It’s not that simple,” he begins, and she cuts him off.

“Oh, yes, it is. _You_ choose what you do. Your life is made up of _your_ decisions, not your mother’s or your father’s or Luke’s or Snoke’s. They’re all gone anyway, it’s just you now. You can choose anything you want. It’s all _yours_ , and you _own_ it, and…”.

And she stops, because he is staring over her shoulder with wide and wild eyes, and when she turns to see what he’s looking at, Poe is there in the doorway, watching her intently.

 _Dameron_ , she hears Ben think in her head, and his tone is murderous. She feels him step closer to her, senses the protectiveness emanating from him as he places his hand on the small of her back. She moves slightly to stand in front of him, directly between him and Poe, her own protective instincts awakened and wary.

 _Can he see you?_ She asks, and gets her answer when Poe’s eyes drift around her, as if searching for something, and then circle back to her face.

 _I don’t think so,_ he answers.

“Rey?” Poe says, his eyes roaming around her again, flashing a smile that does not reach his eyes. “Do you have a moment? I was hoping to have a word with you.”

“Of course,” she says, and her voice is remarkably steady.

There is a pause while they stand looking at each other.

“In my office.” Poe clarifies.

She nods. “Of course.”

 _Have you ever played sabacc?_ Ben asks in her mind.

_No._

_Dejarik?_

_A little._

_This will be like that, but dangerous,_ he thinks. _Bluff and counterbluff. Anticipate his actions, don’t let him see yours. And say whatever you need to say to walk out of that office freely._

 _I can handle this,_ she reminds him.

 _I know you can,_ he responds. She feels his anxiety anyway, or is it hers? Sometimes when they’re together she can’t tell which one of them is feeling what.

She begins moving towards the door.

Poe lifts his eyebrow. “Please leave the staff here.”

“Oh,” she says, glancing down at it. “Sorry, I forgot I was holding it.” 

“Of course,” Poe says, watching her as she leans it against the wall. He waits for her to leave the room before falling into step behind her, and Rey realizes that he’s keeping her in front of him so he can easily stop her if she attempts to run away. That, of course, would be a truly stupid thing to do at this point, and she is somewhat relieved to realize that he underestimates her enough to think she might try.

As if he could stop her, if she chose to run.

When they reach his command office, he shuts the door behind him and stands by the table at the front of the room. There is a long silence as they both wait to see who will speak first. He expects it to be her, she knows, expects her to have a breathy, incoherent explanation for what he’s just witnessed.

 _He’s going to be very disappointed_ , she thinks, almost enjoying the thought. She summons a lighter form of meditation to keep her breathing even and her face relaxed and neutral as she waits for him to speak.

Minutes pass, and she continues her meditation while Poe grows more uncomfortable. Finally, he breaks the silence, clearing his throat before speaking.

“You might know that we have a spy in the First Order,” he says, and she nods, even though she had no idea.

“That individual has sent us something very interesting, something their General Hux has been holding on to for a little while.”

He presses a button on the table, a holo lights up the room, and Rey has to work very, very hard to maintain her impassive expression.

It’s clearly surveillance footage, and at the moment it is paused. It shows a turbolift with two people standing inside, which would not ordinarily be remarkable.

Except that the two people are her and Ben, and they are on their way up to the Throne Room.

 _Like a game, but dangerous_ , she thinks. _Well, here we go._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Living A Lie" Aimee Mann


	9. Denial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Last Jedi is confronted about her relationship with the Supreme Leader and has to make a difficult decision

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There were so many ways that this could have gone and still gotten me to where I needed to be for the overall story. This is how it fell out once they started talking.

“You know, I always thought that story about you killing Snoke was First Order propaganda,” Poe mused, his eyes drawn to the holo. “You weren’t even there, you were off finding Luke Skywalker. I _thought_.” He turns and looks at her, one eyebrow raised. “But no?”

His first move will be trying to draw her out, she knows. She needs to let him think that he is doing that, while she figures out what he really knows, or suspects he knows.

“No,” she says, with a sigh.

The best way out of this is to tell only some of the truth, and let him imagine the rest.

“I mean, I _was_ with Luke,” she says, keeping her eyes on the holo, on the image of her and Ben, in the turbolift, just the two of them. “Before I went there.”

“Why did you go?” He asked. “Straight to the enemy, Rey. Why would you do that?”

“I thought…” she starts, and then her voice fails her for a moment, and she looks away from the holo.

_Because I saw Ben Solo, who he really is, and he’s not a cruel tyrant, he’s as lost and alone as anyone has ever been, and he doesn’t belong there. He never really belonged there._

She remains silent, not trusting her voice, and Poe sighs.

“There’s audio, too,” he says quietly, and pushes a button on the table.

She hears her own voice, an odd echo on the holo, and she looks up.

_“You don’t have to do this. I can feel the conflict in you. It’s tearing you apart.”_

She remembers this.

_He had been staring straight ahead when she said that, as if he didn’t want to acknowledge her presence by looking at her. She had known that what she was saying was the truth, she had known he might not admit it right away, but she needed him to admit it and she was never going to get anywhere with him if he didn’t look at her._

Poe pushes a button on the table, and the holo pauses. “Rey, why?”

She hears the defeated tone in her voice as she answers him. “I thought, with him on our side, we’d be sure to win, and I thought I could turn him. I thought I could bring him back.”

Poe is amazed. “What the hell made you think that?”

She breathes deeply and closes her eyes.

“When I was with Luke, something happened. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was Snoke. He connected B…Kylo Ren and I through the Force. We could see each other, we could talk.”

“You could talk?” Poe sounds derisive. “Talk about what?”

“We didn’t start by talking. The first thing I did was try to shoot him with my blaster.” 

Poe chuckles to himself. “Too bad you didn’t hit him.”

“I couldn’t,” she tells him. “It didn’t work that way. I didn’t understand it – I still don’t – but I got the sense that he was… _turnable_.”

Poe’s eyebrows lower as he gazes at her.

“He was conflicted.” She explains. “He was, well…”.

“Being torn apart,” Poe supplies, his tone registering his disbelief in a Kylo Ren with doubts, and she nods. “So why would Snoke hook you two up like that, if his pet Force user was _conflicted_?”

“To lure me in,” she confesses, embarrassed. “To bring me to him, so I would tell him where Luke was.”

“And it worked,” Poe states. 

She nods. “Yes, it worked. I went to the _Supremacy_ to see Kylo.”

He pushes the button again, and she hears her voice saying his name.

_“Ben.”_

On the holo, she sees Ben’s eyes go to her, and she remembers how he had looked in that moment, his eyes soft, his face vulnerable. How long had it been since he’d been called by his real name?

Since Han had called to him on Starkiller Base.

 _Oh, why didn’t I recognize what he was feeling in that moment?_ She hadn’t paid any attention; she was just pleased to have gotten his attention so she could talk to him, convince him.

The holo pauses again. “You called him Ben.” Poe’s voice is flat. “Is that something he told you about when you talked?”

She looks at Poe in surprise. “You know his real name?”

“Of course I do,” he says, a tightness in his voice. “Ben Solo, Kylo Ren. The psychopathic asshole who killed his father in cold blood and broke his mother’s heart.” He turns and looks back up at the holo, his expression darkening. “He murdered an old man right in front of me, I saw him give the order to wipe out an entire village on Jakku.” He looks back to her. “So how did you know his name?”

Rey can feel herself trembling, staring at the vulnerable face of the man in the holo, trying to reconcile the Kylo Ren that Poe has just mentioned with the Ben that she has gotten to know. _How can they be the same person? How can the man who was so supportive of me when I needed him, so broken by his mother’s death, how can that be him?_

But it _is_ him, she knows that. Because she’d seen him that way, too, his snarling anger in the forest of Starkiller, the wounds he gave Finn. She had watched him plunge his saber into his father’s chest.

“Han called him that name, on Starkiller,” she tells Poe. “Just before.” She can feel tears in her eyes, and she blinks them back. Poe sees this, and his face relaxes a bit.

“The interesting thing to me,” he says softly, “Is how he responded when you said it. I mean, look at his face.” She looks again and sees the man she’s come to know through the bond. Not Kylo Ren. _Ben._

“He likes it,” Poe says, in quiet amazement. “Or he likes…well. Let’s watch.” He pushes the button again.

_“When we touched hands I saw your future. Just the shape of it, but solid, and clear.”_

The Rey on the holo is purposeful, confident, convinced of her own rightness. _I thought he’d understand, and he’d believe me. I thought maybe he’d seen the same thing I had._

 _When we touched hands._ It was a precious memory to her, touching her hand to Ben’s, seeing the tender look in his eyes right before the vision took hold, the future spread out before her in all its possibilities. It was one of the best memories she had, and was perhaps the closest she’d ever been to something sacred, something so right it was beyond any definition of right. 

She hears the button click again.

“ _’When we touched hands?’_ ” Poe asks, a dangerous current underlying his words.

Her voice is steady and mild, and she keeps her eyes on the holo despite the chill that runs down her spine. “I’m wearing binders, do you see?” 

“So when he put them on you, that’s when it happened.” She nods. “How did you see his future?”

“It was a vision.” She shrugs as if it is unremarkable. “Sometimes that happens with the Force.”

“Did Snoke made that happen too?”

“Most likely.”

“What was it?” Poe asks. “His future?”

She turns to look at him, her eyebrows raised. “ _’Just the shape of it,’_ ” she reminds Poe, and he nods and turns the holo back on.

_“You will not bow before Snoke.”_ On the holo, she walks over to him and stops, much closer to him than she had realized she was. _“You’ll turn."_ She leans in close, whispering now. _“I’ll help you. I saw it.”_

Rey watches the way she looks at Ben, and the way he looks at her. Their eyes are taking in every detail of each other, and they are close, so close. _If I lean in a little more, I’ll be right up against him,_ she realizes, and she’s holding her breath, waiting to see if she does lean in, even though she lived it and she knows that wasn’t what happened. _The way he’s looking at me, he looks like …._

She doesn’t know what she sees in his expression, but she can feel her own face growing warmer.

“Look at you go,” Poe says, and his voice is sly. “Working him over.”

She startles and looks over at him. He turns to her with what looks almost like admiration.

“You know,” he says thoughtfully, “I had always pegged you as a straight-forward person. What you see is what you get, right? But there is obviously so much more to you.”

She keeps her face still as she inclines her head slightly. He can read that as a nod if he likes. He smiles and turns back to the holo as Ben speaks.

_“I saw something too. Because of what I saw, I know when the moment comes you’ll be the one to turn. You’ll stand with me. Rey. I saw who your parents are.”_

On the holo, her face changes, and she begins to back away from him, because there is something else happening here, something more, something turbulent and overwhelming in his feelings, and she can't quite place it.

She realizes that her hands are sweating, and she discreetly wipes them along her sides.

“That’s the end,” he says, as the holo flickers and goes out. He turns to her. “Well, Rey,” he says, and then goes silent.

Rey waits to see what his next move will be.

“You were magnificent. You played him like a Hapan lute.”

She says nothing, just lifts an eyebrow.

“That bit about not bowing before Snoke, that was really good. Appealing to his need to be all-powerful. And that seductive little whisper, right at the end there?” Poe shakes his head. “I didn’t know you had it in you.” He leans on the table, looking almost eager. “So, what happened after that?” 

“What, no holo from inside Snoke’s Throne Room?” She asks, as if teasing him.

“No,” he shakes his head. “Or none that we’ve received yet. But my guess is that there isn’t. Guys like that want evidence against everyone else, but don’t want any that can be used against them.”

She nods as if she completely agrees with him.

“So, tell me,” Poe prompts, as if they are sitting around a cantina sharing a choice bit of gossip. “What happened?”

She takes a deep breath, willing herself to remain calm and open to his expectations, so that she can take cues from him about how much to say.

“Snoke tried to get me to tell him where Luke was, and I wouldn’t. So he took it from my mind.” Her voice shakes slightly at the memory. “Once he found what he wanted, he taunted me by showing me what was happening to the convoy, through some sort of ocular device. I saw you all being blasted apart. And then he commanded Ben to kill me.”

“ _Kylo_ ,” Poe says, his eyebrows moving up almost imperceptibly, and her heart skips a beat.

“He told Kylo to kill me,” she nods, keeping her voice steady. “He said it would be the cruelest stroke. Because I’d believed in Ben Solo the way I had, I think.”

“So how did you manage to get away?” Poe asks. “How did you kill Snoke, with Kylo there? And I imagine he had security in the room, right?”

“Yes, he did.”

“So how the hell…?”

Rey’s thoughts are tumbling furiously behind her smooth expression. She knows that if she tells Poe the truth, he won't hesitate to take advantage of it. To use it against Ben. As long as there isn't surveillance footage from the Throne Room, she could stick to the story Ben had originally told and keep them both safe. 

“I was able to block Snoke’s mind, I don’t know how. He had taken my lightsaber when we entered the room, and it was on the side of his chair. I think he was so excited to watch Kylo kill me, he didn’t notice me turning it towards him until it was too late, when I turned it on.”

“But the guards…there were how many?”

“There were eight.”

Poe is watching her intently. “Eight guards, and Kylo Ren. How…?”

_There’s no way around this._

“Kylo didn’t come after me,” she tells him. “He sort of protected me.”

Poe’s mouth is working, but no words are coming out. He is clearly stunned.

“We fought them off, we killed all of them. The two of us, together.” She can’t help her voice growing softer, which worries her; if she can hear it, so can Poe, and that’s not a good thing. But those moments, moving with Ben in what felt like a dance – a violent dance, but still a dance – those were some of the most amazing moments of her life. She had never felt so completely in tune with anyone or anything before, so completely _one_ with someone.

“Eight of them.” Poe’s eyes fall to the table as he tries to process what she has told him.

“Yes,” she confirms. “Eight of them. It’s…we’re…”. She tries to think of words to explain, but anything she could say is too dangerous, to her and to Ben. She shrugs. “We used the Force to help us, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” Poe mutters. “It was a Force thing, yeah. You and Kylo Ren, fighting the Supreme Leader’s guards.” His voice sharpens, but he does not look up. “Then what happened?”

“We had a disagreement,” she says carefully. “We fought over the lightsaber – that’s how it got broken – and then everything exploded around us and when I woke up, Kylo was still unconscious and everything was on fire.”

“Holdo,” Poe murmurs.

“I grabbed the pieces of the lightsaber and left. And Chewie found me and we went to Crait and, well, you know it from there.”

Poe looks up, his eyes narrowed slightly. “You didn’t kill him? Why didn’t you just kill him? He was unconscious.”

“The entire place was on fire,” she says, using a tone of slightly insulted disbelief. “I had no idea how long I had before it all came down around me.”

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Sorry.” 

Silence falls between them, and she begins to hope that the interview is finished. She’s explained the holo, fairly well she thinks, and she’s given him just enough information about the Throne Room to throw him for a loop. He’ll want to have time to think it over, won’t he?

“So,” Poe looks at her, and her stomach drops. “What was the disagreement about?”

“What to do next,” she responds, keeping her voice steady.

“He didn’t want to come with you,” Poe guesses.

“No,” she answers, her voice curt. _Just leave it alone_ , she thinks. _Please leave it alone._ He is looking at her more closely now.

“He was going to keep you there,” Poe says.

“No, it wasn’t like that.” She doesn’t know why she said it, why she feels like she has to defend Ben. Because isn’t this what she’d thought herself, until just a little while earlier? That he would force her to stay with him?

He wouldn’t have done. He’d said so, and she believes him.

“Oh, it wasn’t?” Poe asks. He is looking at her warily.

“He asked me to stay,” she says reluctantly.

“As what, his guest? Like hey, I just killed my boss, can you stay for dinner?” Poe shakes his head, and she can tell he knows there’s more to it than that.

“He asked me to rule with him.” Her voice is quiet, and she keeps her gaze steady and firmly on Poe’s face.

He is speechless once again.

“I told him I wouldn’t,” she continued. “And that’s when we broke the lightsaber between us.”

She waits as Poe works this latest revelation through his brain, trying to anticipate his reaction. But the next thing he says is the last thing she thought she’d hear from him.

“Why the hell didn’t you say yes?” He asks, as if he cannot believe her decision. 

“Why…what?” She sputters.

“You could’ve been right there, on the inside. You could’ve been, I don’t know, Empress. You could’ve made decisions that would benefit us, or at least feed us information.” 

It’s Rey’s turn to be speechless for a moment, but she recovers quickly. “Because I thought that would be betraying my friends! I’m with the Resistance, I’m with all of you! The last thing I want is to be Empress, for Force sakes! And I’m sure that wasn’t how he meant it.”

“Oh, no?” Poe arches his eyebrows skeptically. “Did you see his face when you called him Ben? Did you see the way he _looked_ at you when you got all close up and fluttered your eyelashes?”

“I did not…” she protests, but he cuts her off.

“Rey. He asked you to marry him.”

 _No_ , she thinks, _that’s not what he did. It can’t be_. But for just a moment, she remembers how intensely Ben had looked at her after the final guard fell, and how she had been afraid of what he would say next.

“He did not! He asked me to rule with him!” 

Poe’s voice has a gentle, somewhat patronizing tone to it now. “Exactly how did you think that was going to work?”

She scowls. “I didn’t think about it, because I had no intention of agreeing to it!”

Her heart is beating rapidly, jolts of adrenaline making it hard to hold herself still and not tremble. She thinks of Ben’s eyes as he asked her to join him, his trembling chin, his whispered _“Please.”_ She remembers how hearing it broke her heart even more than his refusal to join her already had.

Poe steps back a little, looking her over, as if trying to determine what to do with her. She cannot show her emotions now, because they are a jumbled mess of sorrow and guilt and anger and she wants to bury her head in a pillow and cry and that would not help her. She concentrates on softening her scowl a little, on looking more reasonable and less emotional.

“Do you still talk to him?” He asks, carefully gauging her reaction.

“No,” she shakes her head. “Snoke created the bond, so it died with him. I haven’t talked to Kylo since then.”

His eyebrows narrow. “Then who were you talking to in the training room?”

_Shit._

With everything else she’d been handling since then, she’d forgotten about that.

She looks down and sighs wearily, hoping to give the impression that she is hiding from his gaze out of embarrassment rather than out of deception.

“Myself,” she murmurs. “I’m just still so _angry_ , and now Finn’s gone off to risk his life, and Rose, and others, and none of this would have had to happen if he’d just come back with me!” She looks back up at him, letting him see the angry tears filling her eyes, which are truly real because Benjamin Solo is a stubborn jackass with his black clothes and his soft eyes and his damn _Please_. “Sometimes I just have to let it out. I didn’t think anyone would hear me in the training room.”

He seems taken aback by her tears; he had softened when he saw them earlier. She files this information away in case she needs it later. _Tears work well._

He nods, accepting her explanation. “Do you think he’s still angry at you?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“He probably is,” Poe muses, almost to himself. “But not as much, given the time that’s passed.” He begins to walk around the room, and Rey watches him pace with a distinct sense of unease. “It’s too bad you don’t have the Force talk thing anymore, that would have made things easier, but we can figure something out.”

“Poe,” she says, and she cannot keep the edge out of her voice. “Figure _what_ something out?”

He approaches her, slowly and carefully, as if she is a wild Loth-wolf that he is trying to trap. “I know it’s been difficult for you, all this inaction around the base,” he starts. “I know you’re used to doing things, a lot of things, and I know you feel helpless right now, especially about Finn. But there’s a way you could help us, Rey, a way nobody else could help us.”

He waits for her to ask him what that would be. She waits for him to explain it to her.

“Here’s the thing,” Poe eventually says. “Kylo Ren wants you on the throne next to him. I think, maybe, it would be a good idea to let him think you want to be there too.”

She goes completely still, as if she has found herself in the sights of a predator.

“Yes, you broke what little piece of a heart he had left. But he’s never had any friends. He’s a weird, angry, maladapted little shit, and he’s been alone most of his life. Imagine what it would do to him, how he’d feel, if you gave him the impression that you’d changed your mind. I think he’d get over being angry very quickly if a beautiful woman like you, the woman he protected when she killed his Master, admitted she wanted him and begged for his forgiveness.” He was quiet for a moment, letting her take it all in, and then he said, “I think he’d give you anything you wanted.”

“Such as?” She asks, her voice barely audible.

“Information. Some amount of control.” He chuckles. “His own head on a platter, or at least the chance to put it there.”

She can barely speak, but she has to ask, even though she does _not_ want to hear the answer. “Poe. What, exactly, are you asking me to do?”

“Infiltrate the First Order. Smile, pretend you care about him, make him think you want to marry him too.” He shrugs. “You know, just a little more of what you were doing in the elevator. Get information for us. Lull him into a sense of security and then take him out, and some of his command with him.”

Rey doesn’t say anything. She can’t.

“We’ll have to tread carefully, setting this up,” he considers. “Kylo Ren’s infatuated, but that doesn’t mean he’s stupid.”

He looks up, and it must be obvious how stunned she is, because he moves to stand in front of her, his voice reassuring.

“Rey. I know it’s dangerous, but you can handle dangerous. You can handle him. You kicked his ass on Starkiller Base, and I’ve heard stories from Finn…”. He bites his lip and looks at her appraisingly, a small smile gracing his face. “You’ve _got_ this, Rey. You could be the one who wins it for us.”

Rey wants to ask him what Leia would think of this plan. She wants him to tell her how he intends to explain this idea to Finn. But she cannot trust her words right now. She doesn’t even feel like she’s in her body anymore; she seems to be hovering somewhere nearby as Poe smiles at her. She distantly recalls Ben’s words from earlier today – was it really only today? -- _“And say whatever you need to say to walk out of that office freely.”_ So she nods at Poe, and his smile deepens.

She sees herself take a breath and ask Poe what the plan is, and she listens as he tells her that they’ll need to come up with an idea of how she can contact Kylo Ren without risking the rest of the Resistance. He’s going to think about that, he tells her, and she should as well, and she tells him that she will. He’ll meet with her in two days, he states, not asking when she might be available, just telling her when he wants to see her back in his office, and she nods and manages a convincing smile. “You have no idea how much you’re helping, Rey,” he says, and she responds, “I’m so glad I can finally do something,” as he puts his arm around her shoulder and walks her to the door.

Rey begins to come back to herself as she walks down the corridor away from Poe’s office, and the more she begins to feel her body, the faster she walks, until she is running desperately, right to the nearest ‘fresher room. She makes it to the washbasin just as she begins retching violently, clinging to the edges of the basin as she vomits up what might well be everything she’s ever eaten in her life, and when she’s finished she runs water through the washbasin to clean it up and slides to the floor, leaning up against the wall to keep herself from falling completely over as she sobs. She doesn’t know how long she cries and shivers there, surrounded by the cold stone of the floor and wall, but at some point she cries herself out and turns to sit with her back against the wall, her head tilted up to look at the ceiling above her, with sore eyes and an aching head and the taste of bile in her mouth.

She cannot do this. She will not do this. Not to anyone, but especially not to Ben. They have held each other together through some of the darkest moments either of them have recently had, they have been honest with each other about everything, they have helped and supported and hurt and infuriated each other beyond all reason. They have fought against each other viciously, and they have fought together, moved together, in a harmony so complete and stunning that she still can’t believe it happened. They built her lightsaber together, and they have touched hands even though they were light-years apart. They have seen the future together. 

Ben is important to her, and she knows beyond any doubt that she is important to him too. She will not betray him.

As long as Rey has been on this base, she hasn’t felt _right_. She has been so alone in the midst of all of these people, she has hidden the Force bond, and she has outright lied, to Leia, to Finn, to Rose. Even on what she thought was the side of light and justice, she’d had to fight against the idea that anything that helped bring victory was the right thing to do. Poe had even been willing to accept the idea of dead children as nothing but collateral damage, and he hadn’t changed his mind about it so much as decided to take a less costly gamble. She’d stayed all this time because of the people she loved, and because she believed in her vision of the Resistance, which was not the Resistance as it actually was. And because she didn’t belong anywhere else.

 _“You are trapped where you are, just as much as I am here,”_ Ben had told her, and he was right. She hates to admit it, but he was right. She knows she doesn’t belong here anymore. She’s known that for a while, if she’s honest with herself. And all the things she’d said to Ben, about making his own choices and choosing his own path, were things she should have been saying to herself.

It’s time to leave. Time to leave and go somewhere alone, where she can think and meditate and work on being a Jedi, without regard to war or politics. Luke had talked about the Jedi losing their way, and she knows she has lost her way as well. It’s time to go and find it again. 

Rey rubs her eyes and forces herself to think clearly. She cannot let anyone know she is going, she’s going to have to pretend to go along with Poe’s plan until she gets a chance to slip away. She’ll need to figure out how to get ahold of a ship to take her off planet, and she’ll need a good explanation for flying it, one that will keep anyone from questioning her before she makes the jump to hyperspace. And she’ll have to figure out how to put some provisions and her few belongings – her clothes, her tools, the Jedi texts that she hasn’t quite begun working on yet, her staff, her lightsaber – into the ship before she leaves on it, without anyone being the wiser.

She doesn’t need to wonder where to go, though. That, at least, she has managed to figure out. She can be alone, and quiet, and have time to think and heal. She only needs to spend just a little while longer pretending to be something she’s not, and she’s pretty sure she’s capable of doing that and doing it well.

There’s a tug in the back of her mind, a feeling of concern, but she gently pushes back against it – _I’m all right, it’s good, I’m busy now though_ – and it fades. Rey frowns for a moment – there’s something she should have told him, something important, but she doesn’t remember what. She doesn’t want him to know what she’s doing until she’s actually done it; she doesn’t want to get another offer from him, doesn’t want to hear another _Please_. So she blocks him out as well as she can while still letting enough through to reassure him that she isn’t shutting him out completely. She doesn’t want to hurt him any more than she already has done.

She stands up and splashes water on her face. She’s due to work in the mechanical wing in an hour or so, and she needs to change clothes before, and she needs to look around her small room and see if there’s anything she hasn’t thought of that might need to go with her. She takes a deep breath before opening the door and stepping into the corridor, her face as composed and cheerful as she can make it, to begin what she hopes will be her final act of deception.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Disarm", The Smashing Pumpkins
> 
> Sorry there's not much Ben in this chapter. I think it will be pretty Rey-centric for the next chapter or two. But it's necessary -- she needs it.


	10. Steps to the Door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Last Jedi prepares to leave the Resistance, and tells the Supreme Leader about the holo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoy, it means a lot to me if you do.

It doesn’t take long for Rey to find a ship.

As soon as she gets to the mechanical bay, she sees it – the transport pod that Rose had asked her to check out. It’s small, to be sure, and it’s unarmed, but it will do for her purposes once she has fixed it.

“Quoia!” The supervising mechanic for this shift raises her head from her datapad at Rey’s call. “Rose asked me to look at that transport pod – she said it was the stabilizer fin?” 

The Durosian consults the datapad and gives her a thumbs-up.

“Got it!” Rey smiles cheerfully, waving in response as she heads towards the ship.

There was, indeed, an issue with the stabilizer fin, which takes Rey exactly five minutes to identify and which she estimates will take slightly under three hours to fix. _Better get started then_ , she thinks. _I might be able to leave tonight, if I can fix it quickly._

She had not packed anything in her bag yet – if anyone came into her room, she didn’t want her preparations to be obvious – but she had collected her small amount of clothes on top of her bed, as if about to do laundry. Her lightsaber was hidden underneath the pile, and she had retrieved her staff from the training room and stowed it below her bed, next to the Jedi texts. Her tools were with her now, and it would be a simple matter to leave them in the transport once she finished her repairs; she had slipped her hygiene kit and a medkit in with them. She had stopped by the mess to pocket a few nutrition bars and fill her hydropack with water; others were doing the same, getting ready for long shifts, so she did not look out of place. She knew there was food to be had where she was going, so she didn’t need that much – just something for the journey, and any emergencies. All that was needed was to fix the transport, tuck her belongings into her bag, and then somehow manage to bring the bag and her staff to the transport without anyone being the wiser. That would be the trickiest part, but she could do that later in the evening, perhaps during dinnertime when almost everyone was in the mess hall. _If_ she got the stabilizer fin fixed quickly.

Her only regret was that she could not bring as many blankets as she wanted; she had sorely missed them the last time, but they were too bulky to pack more than one without attracting attention. A pillow was out of the question, but that didn’t bother her much; she had done without plenty of times.

As it turns out, it takes three and a half hours to fix the stabilizer fin, courtesy of a particularly stubborn flange. Once she finishes, she climbs down off the transport’s roof, careful to keep her tool bag from spilling any non-tool items onto the hangar floor. Inside the ship, she tucks the nutrition bars inside the tool bag and leaves it and the hydropack near the back of the cockpit before running a systems check to make sure all is in order. The engine is sound, the pod is fueled up, and all internal systems seem to be working.

For a moment, then, she sits and considers what she is about to do, which is to steal a Resistance ship and disappear.

Rey isn’t naïve enough to imagine that Poe won’t view her escape as traitorous, given that she was barely able to soothe his suspicions about her relationship with Ben. After this, she will most likely be considered an enemy by the Resistance as well as by the First Order.

She wonders for a moment if she is doing the right thing; perhaps she should stay here and try to convince Poe to drop his plans, or outright refuse to follow through with them. She closes her eyes and centers herself for a moment in meditation, with the vague hope that the Force will show her a way to be able to stay with the Resistance; but all she feels is how _not right_ it is for her here. It’s not wrong, exactly; it’s just _not right_. 

_The Force has its reasons_ , she thinks. _I’m meant to take a different journey._

Rey opens her eyes, looking through the viewport into the hangar below. _This would all be a lot easier if I knew what my journey was supposed to be._

 

It’s useful, knowing how to use the Force to influence people’s minds. Rey does it several times on her way from her room back to the mechanical wing, her bulging side bag and her staff announcing to anyone who happens to look that she is doing something unusual. Through sheer dumb luck, she manages to skirt around the back of the hangar bay and bring her things on board the transport without the few other mechanics present noticing anything; they are all engrossed in repairs. 

There is someone, however, who does notice.

She is stowing the bag behind the pilot’s seat when she hears a growl just behind her, and she jumps in surprise. Chewbacca is in the doorway, looking at her with uncertainty. 

“Oh, you’re back!” She goes over to the Wookiee and hugs him with genuine affection. “It’s nice to see you! How did it go?”

He gives her a couple of sentences about the supply run, then looks at the bag and asks her what she thinks she’s doing. She’s tempted to make up some story, as she would for anyone else in the Resistance, but this is Chewie; he’d helped her go to Ben in the first place, and he had never told anyone about it.

“I can’t stay here,” she confesses, and she tells him why. She leaves out nothing, not her reservations about Poe’s decisions, not her feelings of isolation, not even her refusal to trap Ben. He stands for a moment, looking at her. Rey can tell he’s not happy that she’s going. She can also tell that he understands her reasons.

His first response is to offer her the _Falcon_ , and his services as co-pilot, but she explains that she’ll have to leave soon and without drawing any attention, and Chewie agrees. He questions her quickly about her preparations, and she assures him that everything is under control, and that she’s got almost everything she would want to take with her. Then he asks where she’s going.

Rey hesitates for a moment, then shakes her head. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, you know,” she tells him, and he nods. “I just think it’s better if you don’t know.” She gives a rueful little laugh. “Of course, if you thought about it you’d be able to figure it out.”

Rey can tell from the look in his eyes that he’s now got an idea about her destination, and for just a moment she worries; but this is Chewbacca, and she trusts him, so she takes a deep breath and holds out her arms for a hug. He wraps his huge, hairy arms around her.

“Thank you,” she whispers, her face against his fur. “Thank you for everything. I promise I’ll see you again.” He tells her she’d better, and pats her on the head; and then he leaves the transport and heads back to the _Falcon_ as she turns and comms the flight controller.

“Hi, it’s Rey,” she says, trying to sound cheerful and carefree. “I’ve just repaired the stabilizer fin on this transport and I’d like to take it for a spin, to shake out any problems that might remain.”

“We could find a pilot to do that for you, Rey,” the controller responds helpfully.

“If it’s okay, I’d like to do it.” Her voice takes on a slightly wheedling tone. “I haven’t flown in awhile, I feel like I’m getting rusty. And I miss it, you know? Just a few turns around the base, make sure everything is in order.”

She hears a chuckle over the comm. “Okay, no problem. Just stay close in, we don’t need to call attention to ourselves.”

“Right,” she answers. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready, shouldn’t be more than a minute or two.”

Behind her, she hears Chewie again, and she turns to find him at the door of the transport, a giant closed pushcart container in front of him. He’s asking if she has any garbage to offload, his eyes monitoring the hangar bay. 

She looks at him in surprise; he knows there is no garbage in the transport. Suddenly he opens the top of the container and pulls out a bundle of fabric, which he tosses in through the door without taking his eyes from his surroundings. Then he waves and saunters off towards the garbage conduit across the hangar.

She looks at the fabric for a moment, trying to figure out what he was doing, and then she understands. Blankets. He has brought her some blankets from the _Falcon_. She takes a steadying breath and tells herself to take care of business.

She closes the door on the transport pod and contacts the controller again.

“Okay, I’m ready. Requesting clearance for departure.”

“Clearance granted. Have fun!”

Rey pilots the transport pod carefully out of the hangar door and begins a series of test passes over the base, putting the transport through maneuvers designed to stress what she has fixed on the stabilizer, because after all she does need to know if the thing works. She feels her heart thudding against her chest as she slowly increases her altitude over the base while continuing the patterns of a shake-out flight. _Fly casually_ , she tells herself. _You’re just testing a component and playing around a little, that’s all they see._

“Rey, you’ve gone a bit high.” The controller’s voice crackles over the comm. “You might want to bring it down a little.”

“Oh, sorry,” she answers. “I was having so much fun, I didn’t notice!”

This is the moment of decision. She hasn’t left yet, she hasn’t even indicated she might leave, and so she can turn back if she prefers. She can go back to the base, back to wait for Finn and Rose to return.

Finn. She hasn’t had a chance to explain her decision to Finn. He will come back from his mission, if he does come back, to find her gone without a word and considered a traitor, and he won’t understand her desertion. It is desertion, after all, not only of the Resistance, but also of him. He won’t even know where to look for her.

For a second, Rey wavers. But it’s only for a second, and then she does what she knows she has to do.

She punches the speed of the transport to break atmosphere and inputs the coordinates into the navicomputer as she goes black.

The comm squeals to life in a burst of confused questions. “Rey? What are you doing? Is there a malfunction? Can you…?”

She cuts it off with the flip of a switch and watches streaks of light flash past the viewport as she makes the jump to lightspeed. 

 

She needs to talk to Ben, to let him know about the holo; she’s sure he doesn’t know, or he would have warned her about it. When she reaches out for him, though, she can sense that there are others with him. Rey is surprised – she’s never been able to feel something like that before – but then she remembers that the bond has been changing and strengthening every time they talk. It occurs to her that Ben had been able to see Poe in the training room; her adrenalin had kicked in so suddenly that she hadn’t recognized the change in the bond then. Ben’s voice echoes in her head: _Give me a minute._

They can communicate now, just between their minds, without even the form of each other being present. She had done this after her interview with Poe, and now she knows it wasn’t just a one-time deal. The thought both comforts her and freaks her out a little, because she has no idea how strong the bond could become. Would it get to the point that there were no longer any barriers between them, and everything one of them did and saw and felt would be open to the other? As Ben had once noted, that could become _uncomfortable_.

Rey decides that it’s time to start having some conversations about boundaries and permission and privacy. But not at this moment; right now there are other, more pressing issues to discuss.

She has just finished this line of thought when she feels the soft rush of the Force winding around her, and then Ben is behind her. _He showed up here_ , she realizes, _not just in my mind, but here with me_ , and she feels a lump in her throat.

“What are you doing?” There is a spike of panic in the Force around him, and it trembles slightly in his voice. “Why are you in hyperspace? You should be back at your base.”

“I left,” she tells him, her eyes fixed ahead on the rush of lights in the viewport.

“You left,” he repeats, and his worry grows around them. “On a mission? You can’t…”.

“No,” she cuts him off. “I left. As in, _not going back_ left.”

There is a pause, and she can feel him reining in his anxiety. When he speaks, his voice is once again under control.

“You need to go somewhere isolated, where no one can find you. Don’t let anyone see you and don’t leave anything behind to track.” He tells her, then sighs. “At least you’re not on the _Falcon_. You should be harder to locate in whatever this ship is.”

She grimaces. “What, the entire galaxy is looking for me now?”

His voice is sober. “Hux wanted to hire bounty hunters to find you. I rejected the idea, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t done it behind my back.”

“Wait, how do you know I’m not on the _Falcon_?” She asks, turning to him, and when she sees him she gets her answer.

He is wearing that stupid Supreme Leader get-up, although thankfully the over-dramatic cape is once again missing, and behind him she can see dark durasteel walls. They are smooth and blank, and they ghost transparently over the cockpit walls. His head is almost touching the ceiling of the transport and he should be stooping slightly, but the room he’s in has a high enough ceiling that he can stand up straight. Rey feels like she’s looking at two different layers of room simultaneously, and it makes her feel a bit dizzy.

“Oh,” she says.

“Yeah,” he replies, his eyes on the lights passing by the transparisteel in front of them. 

“Hux,” she says, her voice urgent, and Ben turns to look at her. “He’s apparently got a surveillance holo from the turbolift on the _Supremacy_ , with audio. I don’t know if you knew about that…”.

He looks back out the viewport, his expression serious. “I tried to get ahold of that footage, but I was told it had been routinely destroyed.” He lets out a huff of breath that is almost a dark chuckle. “Apparently not.” He is silent for a moment, considering, and then he turns his eyes back to her, his forehead creased in confusion. “How did you find out about this?”

“The Resistance has it as well,” she tells him, and she sees a sudden rush of memory in her mind, Poe in the training room asking her if he could have a word. Was that his memory, or hers?

“That’s what Dameron wanted?” There’s an undercurrent of anger emanating from him now. “Wait a minute. Did they _make_ you leave?”

“No,” she answers, and she realizes her eyes are filling with tears. _Damn it, Rey, hold it together, keep your head clear_ , she thinks, looking away from him.

Ben moves swiftly, crouching next to her, his hand on the side of the chair. “Tell me,” he says.

She gives a bitter laugh. “Leadership and I did not see eye to eye on several issues.”

“It must have been more than several issues,” he observes softly. “The Resistance is important to you.”

“Not that many,” she tells him, hating the fact that she is sniffling. “But big, and important.” She waits for him to comment on the situation, to say something against the Resistance as he’s done before (and if he does they _will_ have words about it, even if she has to sob her way through them), but he remains silent, listening. She takes a shaky breath and looks at him. “You were right,” she admits. “I’m not sure I would describe it as being trapped there, but it wasn’t right. _I_ wasn’t right, there, I didn’t fit. I wanted so badly for that not to be true, but it was. I needed to leave and go somewhere to think, figure things out, you know? Figure _myself_ out.”

He is watching her, his eyes gentle, and her face warms under his gaze. “Anyway,” she says, looking away to wipe her eyes. “You were right. You should enjoy that while it lasts, it's rare occurrence.”

“On the contrary, I find it to be a rather routine event,” he responds, and she smiles slightly. 

In the silence that follows Rey wonders if he’ll ask her to join him again, now that she’s left the Resistance. Or maybe he’ll rebuke her for her earlier choice, since it didn’t work out well. She steels herself for whatever he will say next, and hopes any argument they have doesn’t get too hurtful; she’s not sure how much of his anger she could take right now.

“You’re so brave,” he tells her, his voice comforting and slightly awed. 

Rey is too surprised to say anything to him immediately, and before she can respond the alarm sounds to let her know that it’s almost time to come out of hyperspace. 

“I need to go,” he says quickly, standing, as if they’re actually in the same place and he can just walk out the door and down a corridor. “I don’t want to know where you are.”

“Ben,” she says, and turns to him, grabbing his forearm as he moves to go. He stops and turns, taking hold of hers, and her wrist falls against the gap between his gloves and his sleeves; his pulse jumps against her skin as she looks up and catches his gaze in hers.

_If you need me_ , she thinks, knowing what he will surely be facing soon, _just let me know and I will be there._

_You too_ , he responds, his eyes fierce. _Any time._

And he is gone, and behind him the durasteel walls of whatever room he was in evaporate, leaving behind only the dingy cockpit.

The transport comes out of hyperspace above Ahch-To, and Rey flies in over the water, just as she and Chewie had done with the _Falcon_ the last time she was here, when she had been confident in her beliefs and her mission and hopeful in her naivete. Now, well, she is still hopeful, but in a more restrained way. And she is tired. She is _so_ tired.

She sets down near the caretakers’ village, and by the time that she has powered the engines down and stepped out onto the grass, there is a group of Lanai gathered in front of her, their faces stern.

_That’s right_ , she remembers, _they don’t like me_.

“Hello,” she says, hoping that at least one of them can speak Basic, because she didn’t interact with them enough last time to pick up their language. Their faces remain still, and her heart drops. “Look,” she says, her voice falling, “I know I wasn’t the best guest the last time I was here. I was disrespectful, and destructive, and I’m sorry. I really am. I just, right now, I want to think, I want to meditate. I need…” and her voice falters. 

They are still staring at her, their eyes solemn, and she finds that the only thing she can say is a whispered, “Please.”

No one moves for a moment, and Rey despairingly begins to wonder where in the galaxy she could possibly go; and then one caretaker steps forward from the group and nods, saying something that Rey cannot understand and beckoning her forward.

Rey feels a rush of relief and exhaustion. “Thank you,” she says, smiling in gratitude, tears back in her eyes. “Thank you, _so much_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House
> 
> This chapter was more transitional, so it was more difficult to write. I think it came out all right, though.


	11. Shadows Where I Stand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Ahch-To, Rey is having difficulty with meditation and the Jedi texts, but she is having some interesting dreams, and it seems the Supreme Leader is a part of them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so...longer chapter, but I had to write background island stuff, not just the dreams. Not as much Ben, but there is a little bit of something kind of smutty. I've never written smut before and I was raised very Catholic, so keep that in mind, but hopefully the somewhat-smut is okay. I'm also working on learning to plot and to be comfortable writing plot. I guess if riding a bike was a metaphor for writing smut and plot, this is me riding with training wheels.
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy!

Within the first couple of days on the island, Rey has settled in and created somewhat of a routine.

Her old hut is no longer the pile of stones that was left behind when Luke blew it apart; the caretakers have repaired it, and she moves back in. She spends several hours the first night trying to sleep on the stone bench that she’d used before, but the nights are colder than she remembers so she eventually makes a nest of blankets on the floor, near the fire pit, and sleeps there. She discovers that the Lanais prefer to make her food for her – apparently Luke was the only visitor who insisted on feeding himself. Her pride urges her to do the same, but the caretakers seem annoyed at the idea and they’re annoyed with her enough already so she gives in. They take care of what little laundry she has too, but on that issue her pride is easily outvoted by her hatred of laundry.

It occurs to her that it might be a good idea to learn their language. The Lanai who brings the morning meal appears to be more accepting of her than the others, so Rey makes an effort to get her to stay and talk during breakfast. With some hand gestures and repetition, she figures out that the caretaker’s name is Atricilla-Lunda, and she begins the process of learning the caretaker’s language and teaching Basic to her in return. This is how Rey begins her day.

The next thing she does is meditate, or to be more honest, attempt to meditate. She sits on the ground, just outside her hut, and tries to open her mind to learn the Jedi teachings, but it almost never works. She thinks it might work at the meditation rock, the one just outside the Jedi temple, but her memories of Luke keep her from going up there. It’s not that she’s mourning him, although she is a little, and it’s not that she is still angry with him for what he did to Ben, although she is that as well, and not just a little; it just feels like it’s still _his_ , that part of the island, even though she knows the island does not belong to anyone. His hut still stands right up the hill from hers, but she avoids it too, as well as the area where the uneti tree is. She just isn’t ready yet.

Once she becomes too frustrated with her inability to meditate her way to knowledge, she takes her staff and her saber towards a meadow lower down the mountain and does physical training, hard and furious and loud, her shouts echoing across the cliffs, until she is calmer. Then she has a small midday meal and reads through the Jedi texts. She has been able to figure out the information in one of them – it’s a series of instructions on Jedi techniques – and she practices what she’s reading, as much as she possibly can alone and without a Master. The rest of the books are proving difficult to decipher, although she thinks one is about the Jedi belief system, and perhaps another is the history of the Jedi up to a certain time. She is having difficulty figuring out the language used to write most of books. Once she becomes too frustrated with that task she sets out to explore different parts of the island and perhaps wash herself in the ocean if the day isn’t too cold or rainy.

Another Lanai brings a small evening meal, which is still more food than Rey would have seen in a whole day on Jakku, and then she has nothing to do but sit and think. This is the hardest time of the day, the time when she thinks about everyone she cares for, especially Finn and Rose. She suspects they’re still on the mission, and she wonders how it’s going, and how they are, and if they’re safe. She speculates about Poe’s reaction to her running from the base, and if she’s now being tracked by the Resistance somehow. She thinks of Leia, and what the general would have made of her decision to leave the Resistance, and Chewbacca, and how kind he had been to give her the blankets. She is lonely during the evenings, so lonely that she feels hollow inside, but at least this is an honest loneliness. It’s easier to bear being lonely when you are actually alone. She had cried herself to sleep that first night, curled up in her blankets on the floor, but she's managed to keep herself from doing it again.

Not too many nights later, when she feels the tug at the back of her mind, she is all too happy to respond. Ben does not make any kind of appearance through the bond, to minimize his knowledge of where she might be, and she limits what she says and what she shows him for the same reason. They don’t communicate for long anyway, just enough for each to know that the other is all right; and soon the quick check-in becomes a semi-regular part of her nightly routine. Rey is grateful for that, even though they don’t spend a lot of time in the bond; it’s just nice to have contact with someone from outside the bubble world of Ahch-to.

As the last part of the day’s routine, Rey starts a small fire in her hut, curls up in her blanket nest, and drifts off to sleep. For the first week or so, her sleep is dreamless; but that doesn’t last for long.

_Rey stands up high on the island, on a flat plain near the top of a cliff; this spot is familiar to her, here in her dream, but she’s aware that she’s never been there in her waking life. She is watching the horizon, looking for something, although she doesn’t know what she’s waiting for. As she waits, she tracks the progress of the twin suns across the sky; they move in tandem, fluidly and far more quickly than they do in the waking world, and as they slip below the horizon she watches the night crawl slowly across the sky. Stars wink into existence above her, and she realizes that the skies are clear, which only rarely happens on this island. The star field is vast and breath-taking, an endless blanket of sparkling gems laid thick across the velvet of the night sky, majestic and peaceful. Then the sky begins to fade into a soft light, the stars blinking out like tired eyes closing for a rest, and the suns awaken, rising through bands of soft blue and bright yellow to take their place above the green island and the ocean that mirrors the blue of the sky. Instead of stars in the sky, there are now birds, of infinite variety and flight patterns and noise, and the rustle of the breeze through the grass and a feeling of life and warmth and energy; and the day is majestic and peaceful. Rey does not move, does not even search the horizon for whatever she’d been seeking when she came to the mountaintop; she merely stands, absorbing the sunshine, taking in the movement of the suns across the sky, watching as the sunshine of the day cycle gives way to the dusky shadows of the night. On top of the cliff, she is bathed in starlight, her white tunic and leggings nearly glowing; she is fascinated by this new development, and gazes down at herself as the night makes way for the morning. As her clothes blaze forth in the brilliant midday suns, she sees the shadow that she casts upon the ground beneath her feet; it is inky and firm, and it carves a black silhouette of her body in the brightness. She looks back upwards, towards the sky, and watches as the night chases the day once more, twice more, feeling the entirety of the island, the system, and the galaxy moving in harmony around her._

And then her eyes are open, in the real world, and everything is darkness until she is able to focus on the stones above her head and the blankets across her body. Rain is splashing against the roof above her, and the air is heavy with the damp. She closes her eyes and falls back asleep with a sense of serenity.

In the cloudy light of the next morning, however, Rey feels quite a bit less serene. She had known, when the dream began, that she was on the cliff searching for something important, something that would give her some answers, but she ended the dream no closer to having found it. She is annoyed because she allowed herself to get distracted by the beauty of the movements of the stars and suns across the sky instead of continuing her search. So far her work with the texts has yielded very little, and her meditation has given her nothing at all; it appears that her dream will be similarly unhelpful. She is grumpy all through her morning meal; Atricilla-Lunda greets her warmly but does not bother trying to converse with her, and the porgs that usually assemble nearby in the hope of a treat are staying far away. It’s not until she is training that she begins to wonder if answers were somehow woven into the dream, and she just hadn’t noticed them. She swings the saber aimlessly as she thinks; she does not recall the entire dream, but what she does remember are the cycles of stars and suns across the sky, her clothing glowing in the night, and her pitch-dark shadow looming from her feet as the day swept overhead. Night and day, starlight and shadow.

_It was beautiful, but what does it kriffing_ mean _?_

Days pass, and the routine goes on as usual. She finds that she can meditate better when she is concentrating on herself, rather than on unlocking the secrets of the Jedi, and so she begins to examine herself, and her life, with an eye towards improvement. She believes one of her worst character traits is her impulsiveness, and so she concentrates mostly on that, learning to calm herself and to stop and think before acting. It isn’t easy, by any means, and her progress seems slow, but it's a worthy goal and so she continues. She glances over at Luke’s hut more and more as the days go by, and she can feel that she is almost ready to go into it; but she isn’t ready to go back to the temple or the tree yet. Her only conversations are with Atricilla-Lunda (and perhaps a sentence or two exchanged with other Lanais here and there), and Ben (although those are hardly conversations). She wishes she knew how Finn was, and Rose and Chewie, and how the war is going, but she has no way to find out and she can tell it isn’t time to leave the island yet. And so she remains, following her routine, meditating, training, and learning, and she ends every day in her nest of blankets near the fire.

_She is in the Throne Room, surrounded by falling embers, but it isn’t the Throne Room; it’s somewhere she’s never seen, surrounded by scorching heat and the smell of lava and sulfur. Ben is standing across from her, as he had done in the Throne Room, but it isn’t her Ben standing there. It’s someone else, someone she doesn’t know, but it’s still Ben and she is still herself, even if she also seems to be someone else entirely._

_“It’s time to let old things die,” Ben-not-Ben says. “Snoke, Skywalker, the Sith, the Jedi, the Rebels…let it all die. Together you and I can rule the galaxy, make things the way we want them to be!”_

_She can feel tears streaming down the face that is not really hers. “Don’t do this. Please don’t go this way. You’re breaking my heart!”_

_He moves towards her, his voice rising. “You’re still holding on! Let go!”_

_“Come away with me,” she beseeches him. “Leave everything else behind while we still can!”_

_As he stalks towards her, she can feel his anger and distrust, coiled up like a snake about to lash at her. She wants to back away, but she doesn’t, because for all his visible rage she knows that he is lost and so alone and she does not want to leave him. “Don’t you turn against me,” he implores, holding out his hand, his voice and his eyes uncertain and frightened. “Please,” he whispers, and she sobs more, knowing there is no way back from this, no way back to each other, no matter how much she wants there to be._

_“You’re going down a path I can’t follow!” She cries, her voice cracking, as she reaches for the lightsaber on his belt, and before she can get ahold of it his face contorts in fury and he brings his arm up, curling the fingers of his hand together._

_She feels her throat closing as her air is cut off, leaving her gasping for breath and clawing at her neck while he stares at her, and he is not Ben in this moment, she doesn’t know him anymore, and the black above them and red beneath them and the falling orange embers begin blurring in front of her as he gives one last, final clench of his fist and she feels herself fall._

Rey wakes up gasping and choking, holding herself up off the blankets with her hands as she wheezes, desperately trying to catch her breath. As soon as she does, she bolts from her hut out onto the path, the cold wind whipping her tunic and her hair wildly as she looks around, trying to orient and calm herself.

There is a frantic pull at the back of her mind, and she recoils instinctively before she realizes that this isn’t Ben-not-Ben coming after her; it’s her Ben trying to find her, and he is terrified. He must have felt her struggling to breathe.

_I’m here_ , she tells him, _and I’m fine, well not really but it’s okay, it was just a bad dream_. She is shaking in the breeze as she feels his emotions wash through her across the bond – relief, then guilt, then despair and self-hatred, and a quick image of herself, clutching at her throat. She realizes that he must have been dreaming along with her; she hadn’t known it was possible to share dreams, but apparently they can. If he was Ben-not-Ben to her, then she must have been Rey-not-Rey to him, and he had dreamed of choking her into unconsciousness.

No, that’s not exactly right. He had dreamed of killing her.

_It wasn’t you_ , she insists over the bond. _You know that it wasn’t me, so it can’t have been you!_

_I know_ , he responds, but he seems shaken and erratic, and a wave of misery surges across the bond at her.

Rey doesn’t know the people they had been in the dream, the not-Ben and the not-Rey, but she is getting the distinct impression that he does. Or at least he thinks he does.

_Ben_ , she asks, trying to be calm for him, _who were we, in that dream?_

He pulls away from her mind immediately, an icy barrier rising between them before she has a chance to stop it.

“No, no, no!” She says into the gusts tearing across the island, wrapping her arms around herself for warmth. “Ben, get back here!”

But he doesn’t, and after a few moments she is too cold to stay outside any longer. She returns to her hut and pulls the blankets close in around her, listening to the wind howling outside as she attempts to warm herself enough to go back to sleep. It takes a long time to fall asleep again, because she cannot stop seeing the dark look in not-Ben’s eyes as he watched her suffocate.

The next morning, Rey leaves her hut and goes up the pathway to Luke’s. It isn’t so much that she makes the decision to go as it is simply the feeling that it is time. Outside the doorway she pauses, a slight smile on her face as she recalls standing outside the door, demanding that Luke emerge and talk to her about coming back to the Resistance. She had been so determined to drag his cantankerous old ass back, or to have Chewie do it for her. After all his refusals and denials, he had gone back anyway, even if only through the Force, and he had done what he had said was impossible; he had saved the Resistance. She remains outside for a little while, remembering, and then takes a deep breath and opens his door.

She steps inside the hut quietly, as if afraid to disturb him, but of course he is not there, and none of his few possessions are there either. The room is completely bare, except for a small cot against one wall. She closes her eyes and tries to get a sense of him, but there is nothing. It’s just an empty stone hut now; no one would ever have known that a Jedi Master named Luke Skywalker had lived there for years, isolated from the rest of the universe, in perpetual penance for a moment of weakness. She whispers his name into the stillness, somehow imagining that he might respond. But of course he doesn't, and she knows it's time to go back outside.

As she leaves the hut, she sees Atricilla-Lunda coming up the path with breakfast. Rey goes to meet her, but not only because she is hungry and because she enjoys the company. She has an important question to ask – she wants to know if the Lanais kept Luke’s possessions, and if so, where they might be.

_Rey feels good, so_ incredibly good _. She’s never felt this before, not once ever in her life, this tingling sweeping all-encompassing_ heat _that grows and spirals and surges inside of her until she is gasping and moaning and clinging tightly to him, digging in her nails as she tries to find purchase against his slick skin. Under her fingertips she can feel the muscles in his back shifting as he moves forward and backward and forward again, and she moans and buries her face in his shoulder. She wants to, she_ has to _, taste his skin, his sweat and hers comingled, so she opens her mouth and licks just where his shoulders join his neck, then presses her lips down and sucks. He startles and groans, and the combination of his movements and the rough, gravelly sound of his voice as he says her name nearly undoes her and she wants_ more _so she wraps her legs around his waist and this changes_ everything _, she is throbbing deep inside around him or maybe that’s him, she can’t tell because they’re so closely intertwined and the thought of how they’re tangled together and what it must look like makes her shake and growl his name in a voice she’s never heard from herself before. She sinks her teeth into his shoulder; he cries out and dips his head to take her earlobe roughly in his teeth, his soft lips and his sharp bite and his panting breaths that she both hears and feels make her feel like fire, like all the nerves in her body are sizzling beneath him. He is everything,_ everything _, he surrounds her and smashes her to bits and pulls her back together again, the sound of him, the feel of him, the smell of him is in every cell of her body and she is wailing and shuddering all around him. She grips his hair, hard, and pulls his forehead down to rest against hers as she explodes in thrilling waves of sound and pleasure, seeing brilliant flashes behind her closed eyes as he crashes harder into her, fast and fierce, calling her name like a battle cry, whispering it like a prayer, before he goes still and they lie there on the blankets, woven around and through each other, their hearts pounding against each other's chests and their breaths coming fast and ragged, until he gently brings his lips to hers and they kiss, exhausted and panting._

Rey bolts up in her nest of blankets, heart pounding, covered in sweat, both on alert and oddly relaxed. She quickly surveys the room to make sure she is alone (she is) and checks to make sure that her clothes are still on (they are). _All right, it was just another dream_ , she thinks, and starts feeling dizzy (most likely because she sat up so quickly after whatever that was, and what _was_ that anyway…?)

Oh. _Oh._

She lies back down and pulls the blankets up over her chest, even though she’s far too warm already, and closes her eyes.

She knows what they were doing. She’s never done it before, but she’s seen animals doing it on Jakku, and once at Niima when she was much younger she’d walked into a trader’s tent to pass along a message from Plutt and found the trader rutting on the floor with one of the girls from the cantina. She’d backed out quickly, before they’d seen her, and her only thoughts immediately afterwards had been to note that humanoid creatures could mate face-to-face, unlike animals, and to decide that she should probably wait until it was over before passing along Plutt’s message. It hadn’t looked like much fun, with the groaning and the grimacing and the rough movements, and she had been even less inclined to desire it as she grew older and began having to deal with men with calculating eyes and grabbing hands who didn’t seem to understand the word “no”. She'd never been interested in mating with anyone.

Until now, when Dream Rey decided she wanted to mate with Ben Solo.

She flushes, full-body, and goes hot all over, but does not move the blankets off her. Feeling slightly embarrassed and keyed up, she goes back over the dream in her mind, minute by minute, detail by detail, her eyes closed so that she can imagine it more clearly. She’s begun to think that her dreams are messages, or sometimes visions, and she wants to see what she can glean from this one.

She forces herself to think about it rationally, gathering facts and impressions. They’d been in this room, on these blankets, which means it probably wasn’t a vision of the future because he doesn’t know where she is. They’d seemed to know what they were doing, so it was most likely something they had done before; she’s not sure what meaning that has, but it is interesting to note. It was the two of them, just them, it wasn’t not-Ben and not-Rey, which is nice because, well, because it just is. It had felt good, so good that she is beginning to reconsider her decision to avoid mating with anyone. 

But would it feel as good if it was to really happen? And would it feel as good if it wasn’t Ben? She tries to imagine someone else, Poe or Finn or some random slightly-attractive Resistance fighter, but she can’t. Her dream was about Ben, and right now he’s all she can think about. In terms of this particular dream, anyway.

_Shit._ They’d shared the last dream. What if they’d shared this one? 

Mortified, she reaches out as carefully as she can, trying to keep him from feeling her presence in the Force, and quickly touches his mind with hers. She is relieved to find that the barriers he’d put in place after their last dream are still firmly in place and she pulls back immediately, before he can sense her there. Chances are that he didn’t share this dream, which will keep things from getting, well, _uncomfortable_. She decides to ignore the vague feeling of disappointment that washes over her at the thought.

Rey yawns and stretches, and when the stretch makes the blankets creep down below to her belly she pulls them back up to her shoulders again and tries to keep her mind engaged in the process of interpreting the dream. She thinks it might be some kind of symbol of the Force bond – that makes the most sense – and she yawns again and rolls over on her side. She’s very tired, and very relaxed, and after all it might be better to work through the interpretation tomorrow, while she is meditating, and…

She drifts away into a dreamless sleep.

When she wakes in the morning, something is different. It takes her a moment to realize that it has stopped raining and the sky is brilliant with sunshine. She bounds out of bed and runs outside, turning her face up towards the suns and basking in their warmth. Forget meditation – after breakfast she’s going to the meadow to just sit and enjoy the day.

_She is standing on…nothing. There is nothing beneath her feet, and yet that nothing is solid. All she sees around her are striations of purple, blue, pink, orange, yellow; they remind her of the way the sky and the clouds look at sunset on some planets. She has no idea where she is or why she is there or what exactly is going on._

_She hears a voice, deep and ancient, and as it speaks she turns quickly, looking for its source._

_“You are finally here,” it says._

_She thinks carefully before speaking. “I’m hoping to get some answers.”_

_“Answers are not_ gotten _. They are_ found _.”_

_“Well, then,” she rephrases. “I’m hoping to find some answers. I’ve been meditating, I’ve been training, I’ve been doing my best to figure out what my dreams are trying to tell me, but I’m not finding anything.”_

_“You’re not finding anything that you_ recognize _.”_

_“I am not,” she admits. “Could you please help me?”_

_A chuckle rumbles through the air. Whatever this voice is, it sounds male rather than female._

_“_ First comes the day, then comes the night. After the darkness, shines through the light _.”_

_She furrows her brow. “I’m sorry, what now?”_

_“This is important, child,” the voice chides. “I want you to remember it. Say it back to me.”_

_“First comes the day, then the night…”._

_“Then_ comes _the night.”_

_Rey shakes her head. “Then comes the night. After the darkness, there is a light.”_

_“_ Shines through _the light.”_

_“Shines through the light.” She pauses, running back over it in her mind a couple of times before speaking. “First comes the day, then comes the night. After the darkness, shines through the light.”_

_“Yes. Of what does this remind you?”_

_“Um…”. Rey is quite sure that she’s going to be wrong, but the voice seems to want an answer so she hazards a guess. “Night and day?”_

_“In part.” The voice does not elaborate, but continues, “Now the next phrase…”._

Seriously? There’s more?

_“Yes,” the voice answers her, and she realizes it can hear her thoughts, and she has the distinct impression that she will not be able to shut it out as she can do to Ben._

_Ben would be so much better at this than she is; he'd actually enjoy it, too. Rey really wishes he was here._

_“Sorry,” she apologizes, embarrassed._

_“You want to move too quickly sometimes,” it – he – tells her._

_“I know,” Rey sighs. “I’m working on it.”_

_“_ The difference, they say, is only made right by the resolving of grey through refined Jedi sight _.”_

_He pauses, and she repeats the phrase, with fewer mistakes than she made the first time._

_“Now, of what does that remind you?”_

_“Black and white, mixed together?” She guesses. “That’s how you make grey, at least as far as I know.” She pauses for a moment. “I’m sorry, I’m really not seeing where this is going.”_

_“Meditate on it,” the voice tells her, and the colors around her begin to fade._

_“Wait, where are you going?” She steps forward, as if she could find the voice and run to it._

_“That was all I can give you,” he says. “You are alone.”_

_It hurts, when he says that, so much that she gasps. But then she remembers, and it stops hurting._

_“I’m not alone,” she says, steady and certain._

_There is silence, and she thinks the voice has already gone until she hears it say, “No._ Not anymore _.”_

When she opens her eyes, she is staring directly into the sun, and she winces and shuts them, rolling onto her side. She had lain down on the grass when she got to the meadow, to stare at the deep blue sky and bask in the sunlight; apparently she had fallen asleep and had another dream, one that was weird and not very helpful.

There was a poem or something that she needed to remember, something about light and dark and grey?

_First comes the day,_  
_Then comes the night._  
_After the darkness_  
_Shines through the light._  
_The difference, they say,_  
_Is only made right_  
_By the resolving of grey_  
_Through refined Jedi sight._

Rey sighs and stands, brushing any grass off the back of her legs, and sets off towards the meditation rock outside the temple, because after all what has she been waiting for? She hasn’t gone very far when she feels a pain in her leg, sharp enough and painful enough to make her stumble. She looks herself over quickly and sees nothing, but the pain is still there, raw and throbbing, and she is beginning to feel distinctly woozy.

She didn’t think there was anything venomous on the island that could have bitten her, and there is no sign of injury, so what….

_Oh, no._

“Ben?” She calls out loud, although she knows he can’t hear her. “Ben? What’s going on?” She closes her eyes and reaches out for him, and as she makes contact she can feel the pain grow exponentially until she can barely breathe.

“Ben?” She whispers.

She hears his voice in her mind, a thin, reedy gasp, shot through with pain and fierce with a deadly concentration. 

_It’s started._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "These Dreams" by Heart


	12. On the Edge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Supreme Leader finally faces the expected coup, and Rey is determined to come to his assistance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one came on fast and furious, and I'm posting it after only one day of letting it sit (which I'll probably regret later, but I'm really feeling it at the moment).

For a second, Rey freezes; then she starts running through the meadow as fast as she can, given the phantom pain searing through her leg.

_Where are you? Tell me where you are, I’m on my way._

_No_ , he answers. _You won’t get here in time. It’ll all be over and then_ you’ll _be in danger._

Rey slows at the edge of the meadow. She can hear the pounding of her heart in her ears, and the roughness of her breathing hurts her chest.

_Ben I can’t just leave you alone there…._

_You can’t do anything else._

It’s a beautiful morning, sunny and bright, the temperature warm and the breeze blowing with perfect softness. It’s the kind of day rarely seen on Ahch-To. The few flowers in the meadow are open to the sun and the porgs are trilling happily among the cliffs, with seabirds drifting lazily overhead and calling to each other. It’s a day meant to be cherished and savored, a day to store up in memory against the cold, rainy days that will surely follow. 

Rey no longer sees or feels any of it.

Especially once she understands his statement about her showing up after it’s over and being in danger; this wouldn’t be the case unless the coup was successful.

Ben doesn’t think he’ll survive.

A wave of despair crashes over her and she can barely breathe, but it doesn’t last for long; it’s followed by an even larger wave of determination, a stubborn need to do _something_ , and this wave lifts her up and bears her along on its crest.

 _The kriff there isn’t_ , she declares. _I will_ not _let this happen._

In her head, his voice is dry and sardonic, the tone reminding her of someone, but she can’t remember who. _It’s already happening, sweetheart._

 _You know we’re stronger when we fight together_ , she argues.

He does not respond. He’s still alive, she can feel that; and he’s still in pain, still losing strength. She wonders how long he can stay alive if he’s bleeding out, or how long it will be until they attack him again. An idea comes to her suddenly, and it is so strangely _right_ that it’s as if she can no longer hear the wind and the porgs and the seabirds overhead, as if she's in a tunnel. It reminds her of how everything faded away around her during their first Force bonds.

In her mind, her voice is calm and quiet.

_Let me in._

She can tell that he knows what she means, from the way his thoughts dart from possibility to possibility.

_Rey, I don’t know what will happen to you if…._

_Ben. Let me in._

And then she is there, on a ship somewhere – his flagship, she knows. She is seeing it through his eyes as he leans against a wall in a deserted corridor, another corridor opening to his right, blood on his torn pants leg and under his feet, his lightsaber in his hand. She can feel the enormous effort he is exerting to contain the damage to his body; she didn’t know you could do that with the Force.

 _Still so much to learn_ , he thinks, and she can feel the hint of regret in his voice. _So many things I could have taught you._

 _Teach yourself to shut up and concentrate_ , she tells him, and the harsh edge to her voice is only because of annoyance, not fear. Definitely not fear. _What is the next move you can make?_

He checks the other corridor. _I need to get to a ship. I’m not sure that I can._

Because he’s injured, and his strength is draining away with every second that passes. And because they’re looking for him.

Now Rey sees what happened, as if she’d been there herself. The attack had been disorganized, as if signals had gotten crossed and one group of conspirators went into motion before the others were ready. That’s probably why he hadn’t realized it was beginning; that, and something else had been claiming most of his attention, some other plans that he thought were important.

 _Lack of sleep probably didn’t help either_ , he thinks, his tone bitter at his own failure as he motions at the surveillance camera before slipping down the next corridor, leaning against the wall as he moves.

He had been injured by their first attack, but then he’d fought them off; the first wave of assailants was all dead. He’d pulled information from one conspirator’s mind before killing him, and he knew there was supposed to be a second wave, and a third, and even a fourth – there had been a memory he’d seen, Hux telling them all that it had to go like clockwork, that even the slightest slip-up would render the whole attempt useless – but those hadn’t come yet. They would, though, and soon. He wasn’t where they expected him to be anymore, but he wouldn’t be difficult to find. There was a trail of blood, after all.

She can feel him begin to get dizzy, and then he startles her by fisting his hand and pounding on his injured leg. He gives an ugly grunt of pain, and on Ahch-To Rey cries out; but the agonizing sensation clears his head and somehow increases his strength.

 _You should let go_ , he tells her. He doesn’t know what would happen to her, should he die while they were still connected, and he doesn't want to run any risks with her. Besides, she doesn’t know the ship, she’s not there to fight physically, it’s probably not even possible for her to do anything using the Force at this distance. _There’s nothing you can do._

 _Not true_ , she thinks. _I have strength, and you need more of it. You can use it, whatever you need, all that I’ve got._

 _How?_ He sounds almost intrigued, and she can feel his mind beginning to work out the possibilities. 

He is bleeding to death, running for his life, and he wants to sit there and puzzle out the mechanics of the Force bond? He is the most _infuriating_ man she has ever met.

 _Damn it, Ben! Concentrate!_ She thinks it in what she hopes is a loud tone, to snap him back into reality, and it seems to work; his attention returns to her. 

She operates on instinct, opening her mind as much as she can, feeling for the bond between them and intensifying it, and she can see her strength flowing through from her and into him, a wave moving through the misty red connection between them. In her mind, she hears a soft sound, like a sigh of relief after drinking something cold on a hot day. 

And then he is off, moving down the corridor again, his movements more forceful and assured, and she is with him now even more than before, her strength feeding into him and wrapping around him as he makes his way down corridors and steps and ladders that run through hollow tubes between decks. She can tell there are areas that he is avoiding, and she wonders how he knows exactly where to go on such a large ship.

 _I’ve been mapping out routes for a while now_ , he tells her, which surprises her. Why would he…? _Concentrate_ , she tells herself, as fiercely as she had told him.

He stops at the bottom of one ladder, to catch his breath. Rey can tell he is getting tired, and she tries to strengthen the bond again, but it’s difficult. Her energy is lessening as well.

 _We do not have unlimited strength, even together_ , he tells her. _And we’re going to have to burn a lot of it all at once now._

_Why?_

_There’s something we can do that will both distract them and disable the tracking. Just follow my lead._

She attaches her thoughts to his more firmly and sees a vision of something mechanical, a device of some sort. It’s somewhere else on the ship and it’s gorgeously technological; she’d love to get her hands on it and see what it does and how, and what makes it work. There is a bunch of wiring deep inside and she understands that if this wiring goes out, the device will no longer work; in fact, if the right wires are pulled, it will explode.

She is amazed. _But this seems important. Isn’t there a fail-safe back-up?_

_No._

_That’s completely stupid_ , she thinks.

 _Yes, it was._ He sounds somewhat amused, and almost…proud?

 _We’re going to pull those wires apart_ , he tells her, and she focuses on doing just that, directing the Force with him, watching sparks popping as the wires begin to tremble and bend. It’s more difficult than she thought it would be, and she feels sweat running down her forehead and into her eyes, her vision going blurry with it. The sparks fizz and flare and then something ignites and the ship rocks and alarms blare. Ben wipes the sweat from his face and she can see again, and he is pulling himself out of a small door in the tube; for a moment she thinks he won’t fit, as big as he is, but he manages. He emerges into a hangar and they use the Force to cloak him so that he can’t be seen as he strides through the confusion to a nearby shuttle. There is a secondary explosion deep within the flagship and as the confusion in the hangar turns to chaos he closes the ramp behind him and straps himself into the pilot’s seat.

Their vision wavers for a moment, and he slams his fist into his leg again. Rey wants to tell him not to do that, because it _hurts_ , but she doesn’t because it works; their vision clears. He powers up the ship, and a stormtrooper turns in their direction at the whine of the engines, raising his weapon.

 _That guy there_ , she thinks, directing his attention to the trooper.

 _He won’t have time_ , Ben tells her, releasing the cables and pushing the engines nearly to maximum. The shuttle shoots out of the hangar into space, and on Ahch-To Rey wobbles on her feet even though she feels pinned against the back of the pilot’s seat.

Ben’s fingers are over the controls, but he is hesitating.

_Hurry up! You’ve got to jump to lightspeed before they send out the fighters!_

_Really? I hadn’t thought of that._

_Put in the coordinates!_

But he doesn’t, and it takes less than a second to realize why and ask the question that she doesn’t necessarily want him to answer.

_Where are you going to go?_

_I don’t know._ His voice is matter-of-fact, as if they are planning a vacation excursion and they’ve only just begun sorting possible destinations.

_Ben!_

_There were more time-sensitive preparations that needed to be made_ , he informs her. _I do have some ideas._

_Oh, for Force sakes!_

There is an explosion to starboard, behind them. He curses under his breath and sends the shuttle into a deep and winding dive, activating the shuttle’s deflector shields and dodging the two TIE fighters that have broken off from a nearby squadron to engage with them.

_This is a First Order shuttle! Why are they firing at us?_

_They must know what was going to happen_ , he thinks. _And we’re not responding to their attempts to hail us and we’re engaging in defensive maneuvers. I’d fire on us in those circumstances, and so would you._

 _This is ridiculous. I’m going to give you some coordinates_ , she tells him as they whirl around to fire back at the pursuing fighters. _Wait a minute, they’re not tracking us, are they?_

_We blew up the tracker, remember?_

_All right, then, punch these in._ She thinks the coordinates to him as he soars over and around the fighters, dodging fire from two more TIEs that have joined in the skirmish.

He doesn’t do it. _Are these the coordinates of the Resistance base?_

She is dumbfounded. _Are you fucking kidding me right now? Just punch them in!_

He slides between two approaching TIEs, dodging their fire and leaving them on a collision course with each other. Unfortunately, they manage to pull up at the last moment to spin around and head back towards the shuttle. _Not until I know where I’m going._

 _The island_ , she tells him. _You’re going to my island._

_Is that where you are?_

_Yes! Ben! Input the damn coordinates!_

His fingers fly over the control panel as the shuttle rocks from a nearby blast and he pulls up, the engines screaming, and makes the jump to lightspeed.

As the blue and white lights of the hyperspeed lane flash outside the viewport, Ben leans back against the seat and takes a deep breath. They are both dizzy, and they are quiet for a moment as they pull themselves back together and get their bearings.

 _That was amazing flying_ , she tells him. _I’ve never seen anything like it._

 _Thanks._ There is a hint of embarrassment in his voice, but also pride.

_I didn’t know shuttles could fly like that._

She hears and feels what seems like a chuckle, but it can’t be, since Ben Solo does not laugh. _They usually can’t._

 _Oh._ She thinks about it for a moment. _I’m glad it worked, then._

_Yeah, me too._

Their vision is clouding again, so he hits his leg one more time, and they both wince.

_You did that on Starkiller too. That night in the forest, when we fought. You kept hitting your wound._

_You can use pain to fuel your strength_ , he explains. _It’s a Sith technique. I’m not Sith, but that doesn’t mean I can’t use it._

He looks down at his leg, and she can see the blood start to run again. They can feel that they are losing the strength necessary to contain his wound.

 _You need to bind that somehow, to stop the blood from flowing. Use your belt or something._ She thinks this at the same time that he does, and she's not sure whose idea it actually was.

He undoes his harness and takes off his belt, bending to pull it tight around his leg. When he sits up again, their vision dims and Rey can feel him begin to lose consciousness. She sends as much power as she can through the bond, but she doesn’t have much left either. She has enough to pull him back from the brink, though.

 _You’ve got to stay awake to land_ , she thinks at him.

 _I will_ , he responds. _Tell me about the island._

_It’s the one I imagined. The one you saw in my head. It turns out to have been real._

_That wasn’t your imagination, then. It was a vision._

_Yes._

_Is this the island where you found Luke?_

_Yes. This is the island I found with the map. That_ you _were looking for._

_Ah yes. You won that round, didn’t you?_

Back on Ahch-To, Rey smiles. _Of course I did._

He shuts his eyes and takes another deep breath.

_Stay with me, Ben. I can’t fly the shuttle for you._

_Don’t worry about it. I’m on my way._

 

Their minds cling together all the way to Ahch-To, but they are both weakened. He comes in for his landing a little too fast, because he is barely capable of controlling the shuttle, and Rey watches through Ben’s eyes as the beach grows rapidly larger in the viewport before she hears the crash echo from down below.

She pulls back into her own mind again, and it is a shock, like falling into cold water; she had forgotten how bright the sun was and how the breeze felt on her skin, and she feels much too light without Ben’s mind joined to hers. She takes off running again, her gait a wobbly, jumpy mess because her leg still hurts, and it takes far too long to get there. There are wisps of smoke rising from where the shuttle is buried in the sand, and Ben does not respond to her when she calls his name.

She opens the ramp with the Force and runs up inside to find him barely conscious in the pilot’s seat, his belt on the ground by his foot and his wound still bleeding.

“Ben! Wake up!” She pats his face briskly and he bats her away.

“I _am_ awake.”

Rey kneels near his leg, putting her hand over the tear in his pants and pressing down.

He groans, then asks, “Can you Force heal?”

She looks up at him, her expression solemn. “I know the concept, but I’ve never done it.”

He nods. “I can’t do it by myself right now, I’m not…”. He stops and takes a breath, gritting his teeth, then says, “Hold out your hand, over it, palm facing it.”

She does as he says, and then looks up at him. “Now what?”

He reaches his hand out and places it on top of hers. “Let me in so I can show you.”

She closes her eyes and opens up to him, and she can see how it works, how to direct her light to where it needs to go, to pull together the edges of his wounds and stitch them closed. It’s a slow process, slower than she thought and more draining than she’d anticipated, and it gets even slower and more draining when he pulls his hand away from hers and slumps back into the seat.

“Rey. Open your eyes.”

She does, and the process begins to go a little faster, although she is still losing energy at an alarming rate. She can’t see anything happening because his pants cover most of the injury, but through the Force she has a vision of things changing and binding together and healing, the jagged wound becoming whole again.

She feels herself beginning to sway in place as her vision dims, and she looks up at Ben to see that he is now unconscious in the pilot’s seat. She has a just a moment to hope she’s had time to do enough healing before everything goes dark and she falls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Devil's Backbone" by The Civil Wars (ah, The Civil Wars -- if a more Reylo-ish body of work exists, I don't know what it might be)
> 
> I've done enough browsing through EU stuff to have heard of the ability of Force-bonded pairs to share strength with each other during battle, and it's one of my dearest headcanons that Reylo have a similar ability, only stronger because it's Reylo. And since this is my fanfic, I decided to use the idea, because I love it so.
> 
> Perhaps not as many battles as you'd expect, but there are reasons, which will be addressed later. For those who have more knowledge than I about the canon starships, I've chosen to use an Upsilon-class shuttle, since it has cannons. So yeah, this FO shuttle can canonically fire on other starships.


	13. Barely Waking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey helps Ben settle in on the island.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've finally got them together in the same physical space!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoy.

Rey feels as if she’s been trampled by a Luggabeast stampede. She sits up slowly, reaching for her leg and groaning at the ache in her back. _What happened?_

Then she remembers. _Ben. They came after him and there were fighters, wait did they follow us?_

Her nerves are sparking with adrenalin as she opens her eyes and scans the shuttle’s cockpit for any sign of danger. No one else is there, only her and Ben, who is lying motionless in the pilot’s seat with his eyes closed. 

Rey whispers his name and hoists herself up to check his pulse, feeling a surge of relief when his heartbeat thrums against her fingertips.

He looks peaceful, as he did the night he’d slept next to her through the bond, but his face is far too pale and thin and the circles under his eyes look like deep bruises. Rey wants to move her hand up from his neck to stroke his cheek or soothe the hair back from his forehead, but she doesn’t want to startle him. She can’t bring herself to let go of him, though, and her hand gently slides down to his forearm and rests there while she watches him breathe. 

Then she remembers that his leg might need attention, and she settles on the floor next to him and peels back the torn fabric of his pants. She sees nothing and she frowns, scrabbling at the ripped material as she tries to find the wound; still, she sees nothing. It takes another moment for her sluggish brain to remember that they had done Force healing.

 _It must have worked._ A thrill of quiet pride goes through her.

Rey hears a soft groan, and she stands up and quickly steps away from the chair.

 _The last thing I need is for him to wake up to me tearing his clothes off._

She flushes at the way her thought sounds and takes another step away from him, jostling the control board when she backs into it.

Ben wakes the same way she did, slowly and achingly, wincing as his eyes drift open, then sitting bolt upright and examining the cockpit. When he sees her standing uncertainly in front of him, his eyes bore in on hers. Rey puts up her mental shields, although she can still feel him trying to get in, and when she pushes towards his mind she finds that he is blocking her as well. 

They’ll never get anywhere this way.

“How…” she starts, but her voice is rough and she has to clear her throat and try again. “How do you feel?”

“Terrible,” he answers, his voice husky and guarded. “You?”

“Same.”

He thinks for a moment. “I feel better than when I landed,” he concedes, finally pulling his eyes away from her to look down at his injured leg and the shredded material around it.

“It’s gone. Your wound.” Rey tells him, the words tumbling out of her mouth. “The healing seems to have worked.”

“Of course it did,” he says, apparently expecting nothing less.

“Can you stand?” She asks as he bends and flexes his leg. “And can you climb stairs? Because it’s a long way up to the huts and I will not carry you.”

She sees a smirk hovering at the edges of his mouth. “I suppose I’ll have to stand and climb then.” He pulls himself up but wavers slightly when he puts his weight on his injured leg, and she steps forward with her arm out.

“No.” He waves her off. “I can do this.” Rey steps back again to give him room. He walks around the chair, leaning heavily on his injured leg to test it, and when it seems to be working he moves toward the ramp. Rey hurries after him and stays close behind as he descends to the beach, keeping her hands slightly up behind his back.

Irritation wafts across the bond at her. _I’m not going to fall._

Her irritation shoots back across. _You’d want help if you did, right? How about ‘thank you for helping me’?_

He stops abruptly, and she hops backwards to avoid bumping into him. He slowly turns, irritation gone, gazing at her with wide, deep-brown eyes.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. “For everything.”

“You’re welcome,” she nods back, in as business-like a way as she can manage when her voice is coming out so soft.

He looks behind her, his eyes tracing along the edges of the shuttle, noting its position in the sand and the damage that is visible. He frowns.

“Is this the only ship on the island?”

“No. I have the transport pod I came in.”

He nods. “We’ll need to scuttle this one, unless you have some place to hide it.”

She thinks for a moment, then shakes her head. “I can’t think of any. Wait, though, let’s not scuttle anything until we’ve seen what we can take from it.”

“I took this shuttle randomly. I have nothing with me.” His tone is dismissive, but underneath that he sounds vaguely lost. “What could we possibly take?”

She looks at him as if he’s crazy. “It’s a First Order shuttle! There’s technology, supplies, not to mention all the parts that might be valuable if we can pull them out.”

He looks at her for a moment, his expression unreadable, before speaking. “Valuable to whom?”

“Well,” Rey starts, her voice trailing off as she gets his point. “I don’t know,” she shrugs, then adds lightly, “Once a scavenger, always a scavenger.” She starts moving briskly towards the shuttle. “But I _will_ look at it first, to see if there’s anything that we could use. Are there tools in there?”

“I must have forgotten to bring them with me.” 

“Oh, well,” she calls down to him from inside the shuttle, “I can bring mine down from the hut.”

“We can’t leave this shuttle on the beach,” he reminds her. “It’s been in plain sight too long already.”

She looks around the inside of the shuttle, mentally assessing its contents. “Just give me another hour.”

“Half an hour.” He sounds firm about it, and she rolls her eyes and gets down to work.

Precisely half an hour later, he calls to her from the beach, where he is surrounded by the little that Rey has managed to cull from the wreckage so far – some blankets, some medical supplies, a couple of small parts – as well as a curious group of porgs. “Rey. Now.” She hears a chorus of squawking and the flapping of wings.

“One more minute!”

“These birds won’t stay off your things.” 

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

“I will let them destroy all of it unless you come out here.”

“Fine,” she grumbles, then calls back to him. “Are you out of the way? I’m going to start it up now.”

“You’re going to what?”

“Someone’s got to fly it into the water and swim away, and you’re too injured.”

“You grew up in the desert. You can’t swim,” he points out. “And since I’m _so injured_ , I won’t be able to save you when you start to drown.”

“ _If_ I start to drown.”

“ _When_.”

Rey sighs as she makes her way down to ramp to him. “How do you suggest…” she begins, but stops when she remembers Crait. “Lifting rocks,” she says, mostly to herself.

“Lifting a shuttle,” he corrects. “It’s a bit different from rocks, since it’s all one heavy, interconnected piece. We’ll need to do this together.”

They probably don’t, but she doesn’t care. Really, it takes less energy to do things with him, and energy is something that neither of them can afford to waste right now.

He places his hands on her shoulders and turns her so that she is standing in front of him, facing the shuttle, and he is close enough that his breath tickles the back of her neck; she can feel the chill of his gloves on her shoulders and the heat of his body on her back. They lift their right arms towards the shuttle and the Force tumbles around them, through their minds and their bodies and back out again, and most sound fades away. No wind blowing, no waves crashing, no porgs squawking. Just their breathing, synchronized and even. As the shuttle slowly pulls from the sand into the air and wobbles out over the water, it feels as if there is no Rey and there is no Ben; there is simply, and only, the Force. They watch the shuttle sink beneath the surface, leaving behind explosions of air bubbles and an expanding ring of waves, and for a just moment the only thing they feel is peace.

 

Rey had a plan -- get Ben up to the huts, find the caretakers and ask them to bring him food, then go back to retrieve the scavenged supplies – but it does not exactly work out that way. It takes them a long time to get up the mountain, since they apparently need more recovery time than they’ve had. When they reach the huts, they find that caretakers have already shown up with bowls and a large pot containing a stew, the Lanais talking at Rey until she thinks she understands that they had brought extra because they’d seen the shuttle land. 

Ben settles in near the outside fire pit with his dinner, regarding it with caution and sniffing it suspiciously when he thinks no one is looking. When Rey turns to go back down to the beach he demands that she eat before she goes, and she decides not to argue; she is very hungry and anyway, she has learned that it is never a good idea to turn down food. 

She is nearly finished with her meal when she notices that Ben has stopped eating and is watching her closely, his own dinner not even half-finished.

“What?” She asks around a mouthful of food.

“Are you in a hurry to get back to the beach?” 

She shrugs, because she wasn't hurrying on purpose, but it's probably a good idea to go sooner rather than later. “Probably shouldn't do the steps in the dark,” she says around another bite, then shovels the rest of the food into her mouth and drops the bowl at the side of the fire pit before heading back down.

By the time she returns with her armload of supplies, Ben has finished dinner and is sitting by the fire pit, looking around at the huts in a daze. Rey had spent her trek back up the mountain thinking about sleeping arrangements. The stone ledges in the huts are not big enough for someone of Ben’s size, so he’ll be bunking on the floor, as she has been doing. There was an old cot in Luke’s hut, but she knew better than to expect Ben to sleep on it, especially if he knew who had used it before him.

He looks up and his eyes focus on Rey and the rather large bundle that she is carrying. “Let me help you with that,” he says, rising from his seat and striding towards her.

She shakes her head. “Thanks, I’ve got it.” He watches as she stows her armload in one of the smaller huts and comes back out to face him.

“So,” she starts, pointing at her hut. “That one is mine. Pick one of the other huts for yourself, and I’ll start a fire for you and set up some blankets. No beds – sorry – I’ve found that it’s a lot warmer to sleep on the floor by the fire, so that’s where your blankets will go, unless you have an idea that I haven’t thought of yet.”

“I do not.” He nods towards the hut closest to hers. “I'll take that one.”

She grabs the extra blankets from inside what is now the storage hut but he stops her as she comes out, taking hold of the blankets before she registers what he is doing.

“It’s my hut,” he says. “I’ll do it.”

“Ben, I can do this.”

“I will do it,” he states with finality, and Rey nods and gives in, going to her own hut to start the night’s fire and sort the clean laundry that the caretakers had left on her bench for her. Which reminds her that they’ll have to figure out something for Ben to wear besides that stupid Supreme Leader costume he’s currently sporting. Perhaps other visitors had left clothes behind, or maybe the caretakers had some extra robes somewhere? Rey smiles when she realizes how slim the odds are that the caretakers would have any _black_ clothing. Ben won’t be pleased, but he’ll have to get over it.

She hears him outside her hut. “Rey?”

“Come on in,” she says, standing to wipe her hands on her leggings, and Ben pushes aside the curtain and enters. He examines the interior of her hut; he still seems disoriented but manages to comment, “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

“Ha,” she says, and then notices an odd expression cross his face as he fixes his eyes on her nest of blankets.

Normally she would try to puzzle out what he is thinking, but she flashes back to an image from her dream, an image of the two of them rolling around naked in those very blankets, and she does not want to think about that, not right now, not with him in the hut.

Deeply grateful that her mental shields are up, she turns back to the fire to hide her sudden flush as he takes a couple of steps back towards the door. “I think we might need to set some ground rules,” she says, trying to sound normal.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him startle. “What?”

“Ground rules,” she repeats, stumbling slightly over her words. “For privacy, you know. Because of how we are, with the bond.”

“I think that’s a very good idea,” he agrees, sounding as enthusiastic as she imagines Ben Solo could ever be.

“I was thinking,” she begins, staring at the fire, “that we should stay out of each other’s heads unless explicitly invited in.”

“Agreed.” He nods, standing in the doorway and staring out of the door, away from her. “And if we’re allowed in and then are asked to leave, we do so immediately.”

“Agreed.”

“And I know it’s easy to talk without talking,” he says. “But I think we should talk out loud as much as possible, not just talk between our minds.”

“Agreed. And we need to be open to amending this agreement at any time, should further issues arise because of our connection.”

“Agreed,” he answers. “Have we settled this now?”

“Yes.”

“Good night,” he says as he tosses the curtain aside and bolts from the hut, leaving Rey alone with her fire and her reddened face and the blanket nest that she’s not sure she’ll be able to sleep in tonight.

 

Ben is still asleep when Rey gets up in the morning, and during breakfast she asks Atricilla-Lunda if there are extra clothes somewhere that he could have. After much translation back and forth, Rey is assured that there are many clothes left behind by visitors and kept by the Lanais, and that Ben will be given some of those. Rey makes sure to emphasize that Ben is quite tall and well-built and will need the largest size available; for some reason this part of the conversation leaves Atricilla-Lunda with a look of embarrassment, although Rey doesn’t mind as long as the clothes will fit him.

She checks on him again after breakfast and he is still asleep, curled on his side with one arm under the blankets that he is using as a pillow and one arm draped in front of him. He is less pale than he was the day before, and the circles under his eyes have faded to a light grey; he is breathing steadily, and when Rey quickly touches his forehead it is very warm, but not hot. He seems to run hot anyway, from what she can tell, so he is probably not feverish. She thinks about staying and watching over him, but he seems to be fine, so she leaves the hut as quietly as she can. 

She sits outside on the grass with the intention of meditating, but she finds it impossible.

She is hiding from both the First Order and the Resistance, and now so is Ben. The upside is that she no longer has to worry about whether he is in danger, because he is with her; the downside is that they’re both in danger, together. Or will be, if they are found.

Does this mean they have to stay here for a long time? How long should they stay here together? How will they even know when it’s safe to leave?

And there is a bigger question – how are they going to _do_ this? It occurs to her that they’ve never been physically in the same place without being locked in battle, whether it be against each other or together against an outside threat. For all that they’ve talked using the Force bond, and for as well as Rey believes they know each other, this will be the first time that they’ve had to co-exist outside of a war zone. The first time that they haven’t been on opposite sides of an armed conflict. She has no idea how this will go, and given the circumstances of his arrival on the island Ben probably hasn’t even thought about it yet. 

She tells herself that she needs to stop worrying, because he is here now and they’ll just have to figure it out, but she keeps coming back to the fundamental question: _What now?_

 

 

When she checks again later Ben is still asleep, and Rey wonders if he’d been sleeping at all before the coup or if he’d only dozed in small amounts, trying to stay alert to possible danger. She sits in his hut for a while in the afternoon, watching the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes; this is probably a violation of their privacy agreement, in spirit if not in word, but the motion and sound of it reminds her of how it felt to lift the shuttle with him yesterday. It is calm and tranquil, and she does not want to leave the cozy bubble of comfort in his hut, so she stays and lets her mind drift as she relaxes.

 

_She stands solidly on nothing, surrounded by striations of sunset colors, and her conversation with the voice and whatever it represents is continuing. ___

____

_“Is this what you were waiting for?” She asks. “Were you waiting for him?”_

____

_“I was not the one waiting for him.”_

____

_“Does it change things, now that he’s here?”_

____

_“Do you feel it?” The voice responds._

____

 

____

There is a rustle as Ben shifts in his sleep, sighing heavily and muttering, and Rey jolts awake at the sound. It’s too easy to fall asleep, here in the quiet, safe hut, and it might be awkward if he woke up and found her there with him, invading his privacy and getting so, well, _close_. She stands and leaves, although reluctantly, and drifts over to the fire pit to think about this latest dream.

____

Does she feel _what_? It would help her know if she was feeling _it_ if she knew what the _it_ was, but the voice in her dream seems committed to having Rey figure it out for herself. She closes her eyes, reaching out with the Force to try to feel something that might be _it_ , but all she feels around her is the life and death and cycle and wholeness in the Force that she felt during her first lesson with Luke, and that doesn’t give her any answers. She wants Ben to wake up; he would make much more sense out of this than she is able to do, and she wants to talk to him. Whether they speak out loud or just between themselves, she wants to talk to him.

____

 

____

____

She decides to wake Ben when dinner is brought up, because he’s slept all day and he really needs to eat. He grumbles ferociously and tries to pull the pillowed blankets over his head, but Rey takes them from him and demands that he have _something_ , and he gives in with little grace. He eats a bit of food, drinks a lot of water, and then flops down on his side again, all without opening his eyes more than halfway or sitting all the way up. She’s not sure he was even awake at any point during his meal, but at least he ate and drank and she’ll take that as a win.

____

Rey leans over him to pick up the bowl and the hydropack, and as she does he mumbles something unintelligible and moves his arm so that it falls over hers, his palm covering the back of her hand. Then his voice is in her head, husky and sleepy and warm.

____

_Stay here._

____

There are things she should be doing while it’s still light outside, since she hasn’t trained at all today and her meditation has been next to non-existent, and she’d like to figure out how to use the parts that she’s scavenged from the shuttle, and talk to the caretakers about retrieving some of Luke’s things from the repository where they’ve been stored; but she doesn’t want to do those things right now, she’s tired and she wants to rest here with Ben. And so she curls up next to him, careful not to move her arm or her hand, and sends her response back to him.

____

_I’m here. I’m right here._

____

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Collide", Howie Day


End file.
